Sunny Disposish
by Valadilenne
Summary: Alice goes back into the Wonderland, charged by a new monarch to root out the cause of classic denizens across the kingdom disappearing one by one. The Mad Hatter and March Hare remain her closest confidantes. WCMI inspired.
1. Chapter 1

This came about after looking through Bri-chan's drawings and her comic, which she co-produces with Rain. Unfortunately I don't seem to be able to force HTML here, so look in my profile for proper links. I'm only borrowing their characters for inspiration, and I can't even pretend to have the skills of Lewis Carroll, so I don't own these or anything.

I will say that I have a tendency to drop in references to other books and things, but I don't really like to point them out because it ruins the fun of figuring out what they are and where they've come from. If you do come across something that you recognize, I give full credit to the genius who said it first. I also usually have particularly famous paintings in mind when I think of different sequences--they are linked through my deviantArt account if you want to see what people are wearing (which, of course, you do!).

That having been said, enjoy.

* * *

"_Your hair wants cutting," said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech._

It was not long at all, and not terribly difficult at all, but that Alice had adjusted to life back aboveground. It was not that she sought to forget her time amongst a very odd set of characters, or that she had lost her imagination or creativity. It was more that she had simply become distracted—once she was back aboveground she really did wonder if she had dreamed it all or made it up in a drowsy afternoon attempt to drown out her sister's readings. It would have explained the peculiarly lesson-based conversations she had held, after all.

But no. Alice being older meant that things were changing—though not for the worse, it seemed. The world was changing and everyone was having to keep up. Hats and shoes had even more buttons and plumes, and soon she was having to wrestle into corsets in order to wear the sleek dresses everyone was questing to perfect—she joined her sisters' talk of cuirass bustles, princess sheaths, and the latest prints from the Continent. To be frank, she herself only really approved of the Artistic dress, with its lack of tightening and a tendency toward soft material flowing about her feet, but even that she could hardly get away with when her peers seemed to hold a mantra of high and tight. She could wear her strange dresses in the study before teatime and that was all. Alice tolerated having to be so careful about where she sat and how she stood, but fashion and appearance were an inevitable part of her world now. It helped that she got on better with her sisters when she managed to keep up with their nightly philosophical treatises on silks and lace, at least.

Alice was not as obsessed as her sisters, but even with her detached air regarding sausage curls and overskirt ruching, the world outside of books and daydreams did consume a great deal of her time. She left her childhood with a cautious grace. No one found this strange or unfair, and to be sure, Alice herself managed to pay attention as she attended perfectly normal balls, theater, and garden parties (with proper wooden croquet mallets in place of petulantly limp flamingos). There were still the books in her father's study, and opportunities to glean something off trips to the Continent with friends, and so Alice settled in to the normalities of life outside her own head and was relatively content.

She found the opera to be engrossing, but the other formal events were only means of passing time for a younger sister without much to qualify her unto the teeming masses except for her pretty head and sweet voice. Yes, surely, she did have an excellent education, but what was that when a personification of beauty kept her mouth shut? Those around her were judgmental, and although they highly prized silence from a woman, it was a false shyness and simplicity of mind they wanted, not the strange tight-lipped way Alice had about her, letting her tea cool in the sylvan shade of a fading afternoon and revealing nothing with her impassivity.

Even now, as she was returning to the seven-eaved blue and white house at the end of the street, Alice's features were markedly—but pleasantly—neutral. She was not thinking of a secret, or a novel thing of an idea, or what she might wear to an upcoming dance, or even pineapples, but instead concentrating on the way the stringed packages pulling against her fingers were bouncing together in a rhythmic sort of way. She was about to complete a thought regarding the musical nature of their sound when she drew up to the fence outside her house and stopped.

It was not an abrupt stop, nor was it one that denoted any shock. She simply stopped, as though she had thought of something that was enough to make her stop. And indeed there was something to make Alice stop, though it was not inside her head. She found herself, however, hoping that it was, because the thing that made Alice stop was peculiarly familiar, as if it were something she was not supposed to think of or know about because of all the other things that were associated with it.

The object sitting on one of the fence posts just next to the gate, as though it had been hung there to mark the house, was what made Alice stop so gracefully, her packages coming to the same stop with a curiously light clattering sound only boxes produce that soon faded. She shifted the packages around on her fingers and reached out to pick it off the fencepost, opening the gate with a distracted air and stepping through as she did. As she approached the porch she glanced around her, looking for the thing's owner. There was no one, no one who would have set such an unusual object on a fencepost with a silent promise to return for it in just a tic. Alice released the packages onto the whitewashed decking and turned the object round to have a better look at it.

It was a hat. A huge hat. A strange hat. It was unusually large in that it had a very high crown, and bizarrely odd in that it was an off-putting shade of green, with the whole thing done in an unfashionably old style. These things alone would have been enough to make any self-respecting woman draw herself up and declare, "I say!" But there was something else about the hat which made Alice raise her eyebrows and look about her once more, peering through the slatted fence around the porch into the dark bushes. It was the large piece of paper tucked into the crown-band that she recognized, and Alice now frowned as she looked out at the quiet street stretching out before her and the lawn, empty in the midday sunlight but for a few lazy bugs trawling up like steam vents.

There was nothing for it. Resolving to search the kitchen and back garden, Alice gathered up her packages and the unusually large hat, opened the door, and overcautiously peered into the foyer. She dropped the packages and hat, which rolled into the center of the room and righted itself in a few spins, and came forward to peer into the sitting room. The dark red settees and filigreed chairs were empty, and there were no suspicious shadows behind the piano. A movement to the north made her jump; only when she realized it was her own reflection did she pause to collect herself. Alice crossed the room to look around her with more certainty.

"There is no one here," she said with distinction into the large mirror with the gold frame. Her reflection gazed back at her silently with the knowledge that in life, it was often best to let others figure things out for themselves.

* * *

It was her parents' summer house, settled in a small village, cutting off the road by its simple existence. A house at the end of the street was a strange thing indeed. The space there seemed to open the place up to possibilities, where at other homes there were fences that did not lead off like words in the middle of a sentence. Here there was nowhere else to go but inevitably forward through the house and into the back garden, where one could see through a small thicket of trees that dropped off to become a large hill extending down into the countryside and another town far beyond. 

Alice had felt so odd; now she had unwrapped her packages and strung up a hammock with some cushions between two trees in the slow incline beyond the house. Here it was cool and shady, and she was not going to think but instead read some strange novel whereupon the first chapter led her around in circles, calling upon her to make herself comfortable, that the book was the wondrous new creation of its esteemed and illustrious author and that she must truly savor the first line of the book. It was thirty pages into this odd imploring and Alice began to drift off into sleep.

She dreamt she was floating in a space without gravity or noise—or perhaps she was falling into something, she did not know which. Existing there in the darkness Alice began to do the thing she had promised herself she would not, and began to think.

Perhaps it was the turning of her mind, but Alice's thoughts were trained on an image she had recently committed to memory, that of her older sister's face during her engagement party. She had been so... Alice didn't have a phrase for it. Superficially calm, without being perfectly and adoringly happy, but feeling and accepting a compromise gently leaning toward something like happiness. Alice had sat bolt upright during the announcements, and after the toast moved near a window to watch her marble-armed sister smile gentle approval at those assembled. Her detachment recommended her quite nicely to the aging relatives and society—it had always been part of her. She wore her heart quite delicately upon her sleeve, and all that was within her rested upon her features. Alice turned toward the window to hide her own frown, unwanted and likely to fetch unanimous disapproval at a formal occasion.

_Now what?_The now-smiling pair had not been arranged—they were acquaintances professed to be in love. The girl's suitor had sent her lilies-of-the-valley every day for the last three months and there was no avoiding a large and much-discussed wedding now. What sort of a man would send flowers to Alice? she wondered. She did not find them to be a terribly original idea, though she supposed the message behind the different types was interesting enough. Lilies-of-the-valley. What an absurd sort of flower—no color to add to anything, and on top of that they smelled awful. And what of men? Alice was not a fool; she had danced at balls with various partners and knew what men pretended to like to talk about. She had once held a highly questionable conversation in a conservatory with some devious Frenchmen and their companions, which was soon broken up by the arrival of a tut-tutting matron. It was this business of hiding one's intellect and emotions which bothered her—manners were all very well, but even her sisters sometimes seemed so formal. They made no effort to breach the lines of grown-up communications to ask her for a genuine opinion on anything besides clothing or their social calendar. Perhaps they did not understand her in turn, though.

And now Alice could see herself walking the perimeters of her father's study, running her fingers along the spines of the books. Her mother did not mind that she spent a few hours there each day as long as she was presentable and in attendance at formal events in the evening—that was their wordless bargain. Alice ordered all the books she liked from London and the Continent; her mother would not have known the difference if she were reading _Middlemarch _or _The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_. It was there, in the study, where she found herself quite happy.

Presently however she began to make out a voice very far away singing something she could not quite understand, but as it began to grow nearer, she realized she did not feel the same sense of panic she often did at the end of a dream—that all was lost and everything would finish without her. Alice knew she was conscious and thought before she woke up that perhaps it was one of the neighbors come to call on her, but her ears came into focus on the voice.

"...at the risk of sounding ra-ther pla-ti-tu-di-nous," it slowly half-sang, "Here's what I believe should be the _at_-ti-tude-in-us." Here the voice gave a pause before starting up again, a dreamy and contemplative tenor, she realized.

_It really doesn't pay_

_To be a gloomy pill_

_It's ab-so-lute-ly most ridic_

_Pos-i-tive-ly sill_

_The rain may pitter-patter_

_It really doesn't matter_, said the voice sighing,

_For life can be delish_

_With a sunny disposish._

She had opened her eyes without moving her head, and saw that there was someone else in the hammock with her, a man at the other end with his legs stretched out towards her but having had the decency to let his legs rest over the side of the netting, one foot in a toehold against the ground to rock the hammock. He was leaning back with the air of someone who has settled in for a long summer's rest, looking up into the trees and humming distractedly to himself with his eyes half-closed. She began to feel panic zinging up through her middle, and Alice began to think of things to say, ways to trap him in the netting and call for help. Yes, she could leap out, and—and, and twist it around him. That would work. She began to furtively look around, wondering if anyone would hear her screaming from the street up past the house.

All of Alice's wildly careening thoughts ceased, however, when she saw her own feet at the opposite end near the man's shoulder. Balanced quite pertly at the end of her shoe was a large cup and saucer. As Alice pondered the weighty significance of this new development, she sat up, her foot beginning to tip dangerously. The man deftly lifted the saucer and cup off her toes and looked down to regard her, mildly raising his eyebrows in acknowledgment. He drank the contents without looking away, set the saucer back on her toes, folded his hands over his chest, and smiled gently at her quite expectantly. He did this with aplomb and a grace only a madman can enjoy, for balancing saucers on ladies' dainty shoetips is an art few have taken the time to master.

"What ho, Alice!" he cried, apparently delighted at her fish-like stare.

There was a pregnant pause.

"What on earth are you doing here?" said Alice with no small amount of irritation. The man jerked his head back imperiously—the saucer rattling slightly against the teacup and the whole hammock giving a gentle heave—and seemed quite surprised that she should ask.

"What do you _mean _what am I doing here? I am quite surprised that you should ask," he replied in an affronted round tone. There was another pause, more delicate this time, and the man frowned slightly at her lack of reply in turn. "Your manners leave something to desired, you know. '_What on earth are you doing here_—very bad form, I am sure! Hardly a 'How-do-you-do-old-bean' or 'Cheery-pip-glorious-day-isn't-it', don't you think?" Alice gaped at him, but he continued.

"Moreover indeed, madam, I am frankly shocked and appalled that you should apparently not know the reason for my being here, and furthermore that you have ignored your duties as hostess, failing to welcome me properly into your--" he looked about and began again in earnest, his voice growing louder "--swinging net_ thing_ as a bosom friend and old acquaintance, and even now failing to offer me any form of refreshment as I believe is customary betwixt two persons in such a setting!" He said this last part very quickly as though he were running out of breath. Having finished triumphantly, the young man put his nose into the air and produced with flair a large teapot from beneath his—she now noticed—floridly orange coat. The hammock was rocking violently in the aftermath of all this, and her ankle was sore from where he had repeatedly driven his finger into it to make a point.

Alice ignored his speech, grabbing the netting around her to keep from falling out.

"If I may ask, why are you here, sir?" she tried again politely. The man looked up at her in the midst of pouring himself a third—or perhaps fourth, by now she could not really be sure—cup of tea, not moving the pot from where it hovered over a differently-patterned cup and saucer, still on her foot. The tea began to flow over the rim of the cup and onto the saucer, where it fanned out over and around her shoe, an umbrella of liquid caramel. Alice tilted her foot just forward to let the tea spill onto the ground. He gave her a thoughtful look, tilting his head to the side, and continued to let the tea flow.

"You had my hat," he said, and brandished it with a flourish before hanging it on the edge of her other shoe.

"Mad Hatter," she said slowly to herself, letting this tingling realization come over her. She had known his quirks, of course, but it was the name which had escaped her. How had she forgotten him? Alice swallowed in surprise. "Of course," she said. "Your hat. I... I had forgotten." The Hatter looked quite offended at this, and crossed his arms, still hanging onto the teapot and blinking at her shiningly.

"Well," he said in a quietly dramatic voice tinged with tears, "My heart is quite broken now, you know." He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. Tragic.

"Oh, I am sorry," Alice began, "I couldn't have recognized you without--" she raised her hand above her head and started to gesture but abandoned her sentence at his look. He stared back at her in blatant curiosity, his theatrics apparently forgotten. Alice felt rather abashed being scrutinized so openly and in time began to take in his features. She had not noticed that his hair was both abundant and shockingly white in her previous travels, as his head had been mostly covered by the infamous article, but this fact could not and did not escape her notice now. Come to think of it, neither did any of his exaggerated features. Alice caught a blinding look at his coat which vivisected the blue curlicued waistcoat beneath, a set of freckles bespotting a round nose, and a pair of ice blue eyes that were still trained somewhere in her general direction, now glaring at her.

"Why did you steal it?"

"I didn't steal it, I found it."

"Yes you did, it was in your house. I had to climb in through a ruddy window to get it back."

"_You broke into my house?_" The Hatter suddenly looked rather defensive as the hammock took another abrupt heave.

"I have a great deal many things inside that hat which I consider to be of essential and utmost importance to my continued well-being—nay, my very existence! Whether or not your windows are unlocked, and whether or not I may or may not have 'broken into'" and here he flexed his index fingers in the air and rolled his eyes "your house is _most certainly_ not the issue here," he replied with a lofty air.

"That is terribly bothersome of you, do you know that?"

"I'm only performing my duty."

"Oh, which is--?" she asked, sarcasm splattering everywhere.

"Spreading sweetness and light," he said reverently. Alice was not quite sure what bothered her more, the fact that he had the gall to claim he was more than just an irritation or the cheeky smile on his face.

"You're much bigger than I remember," he said conversationally, once again looking up into the trees.

"As are you," Alice replied slowly, gazing up what she could see of the house. She rather wished she had stayed inside and boarded up the windows, or at least accompanied her family to the seaside for the week.

"Yes, but I have not grown in the time since we have met. I have only changed and gotten larger. The two are not mutually exclusive, you know," he replied in turn. Alice frowned. The last thing she wanted on a relaxing summer afternoon was a series of convoluted discussions with a madman.

"You have not answered my question, Mr. Hatter," she said, and briefly wondered whether he would leave if she kicked his hat to the ground. Alice glanced up at him; he seemed to be counting the leaves on the elm tree overhanging them.

"And which question is that?" The Hatter plucked his eponymous item from her foot, perhaps reading her thoughts, and stuck his hand inside. Alice opened her mouth to answer and left it hanging there as she watched his arm disappear up to his shoulder inside the massive felt sky piece, digging amidst things that clanked and rattled together until—"Success!" he hollered, pulling out a scroll encircled by a bright red ribbon. "What were you saying?" said the Hatter calmly, looking interestedly at this new piece of literature and sipping a gently sloshing cup of tea.

"Why are you here?" Alice said insistently after shaking her head to clear it. The man could juggle tasks like a fool but not carry on a decent conversational thread for more than five seconds.

"I am here to impart unto you fantastic news," said the man, who was shaking the scroll free of its curl. He leaned forward with intent, tossed the ribbon at her, pulled a pair of reading glasses from an inner pocket, and took another sip of tea, proceeding to overlook the contents of his hat-derived missive. He hummed over it, apparently approving of what he read there, adding "Ah!"s and "I see what you did there"s as he went. Finally he looked up. "You are a very lucky girl," he said, folding his glasses with one hand and replacing them.

"I don't quite follow you," said Alice. The Hatter squinted about them at the empty lawn and the hills beneath, bemused.

"How can you be following me? We aren't moving," he said quietly.

"I—I mean I don't understand what you're talking about!" said Alice a bit louder than she had intended. She was rapidly approaching an unavoidable irascibility. The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this, but only handed her the letter before gleefully turning his attention back to the teapot. Alice read the letter, which was written in a squiggly script and went something along these lines:

_Greetings to Miss Alice of the Upper Realms from Her Grace the Duchess. Her Grace gracefully requests that above mentioned personage be present at a reception in Her and her collective interest, whereupon details of proceeding arguments and and genuflections will be presented. Note well that her repeated presence in the realm will constitute her being given an official status, and that an immediate reply is beneficial to this station. She shall expect her soon. --Ministry of Her Grace the Duchess_

_Copier, can you throw in an illuminated monogram up top there, maybe some fire and destruction? Oh scratch that, Duchess tells me she'd rather have some flowers. Something decent. And tell the butler to get butter and cheese when he goes to market—Pigkeeper in the pantry says she's got nothing left to make sandwiches with except kippers and bologna, and that won't last us the weekend._

The rest of the letter was a series of tasks that had been hastily crossed off. Alice looked up—the Hatter had climbed out of the hammock and was adjusting his coat.

"Well, shall we?" he inquired, leaning over to retrieve his hat from the string netting.

"Shall we what?" He frowned at her.

"You really need to stop answering me like that. Shall we _go_." He made a definitive motion of _going_. Alice stared at him.

"No!"

"No?"

"_No._" This seemed to momentarily stun him.

"What?"

"I'm not going."

"You aren't? Why not?"

"Go back down there?" He flicked a piece of dirt off his enormous hat in response. "Go back down there, when I have things to do here?"

"Like what?"Alice was caught only slightly off guard by this.

"In case this has escaped you, there is a house not one hundred yards from here that I am charged with looking after, and there are people in this world who would notice if I suddenly went missing."

"How do you know that for certain?" Alice nearly replied with "Beg your pardon?" but remembered the sort of results that phrase returned and thought better.

"What?"

"How d'you know they'll know you've gone?" His question did not sound rhetorical in tone; rather, he seemed to be a bit curious.

"Surely they would notice if I were not here when they returned."

"Do you think it will take that long? After all, Time is relative. They could be having such a marvelous time that they wouldn't notice." Alice considered this. When she had read the letter her curiosity had awakened with a stretching yawn and flicked its tail. Now she could not deny remembering that only a few moments had passed when she had been underground before—perhaps she wouldn't be missed. Maybe no more than mere seconds would pass now. She shook her head.

"How do _you_ know?"

"Well, I don't know, you're the one doing the speculating." Alice felt a strong urge to punch him, but better manners prevailed.

"YOU—WHAT--I--"

"So, then. We will go together down." The Hatter donned his hat and began humming again.

"No. No no no no no." Alice flexed her hands out at him, her palms turning white.

He did not respond to this, only stood looking at her. Alice drew herself out of the hammock and thrust the scroll into his hands. "Delving back into the depths of insanity is madness in itself. I am not going with you, Mr. Hatter," she said with finality.

The hat-maker cocked his head to one side, considering her thoughtfully.

"I see." He turned abruptly and began to walk off into the woods. Alice stood there alone in the resulting ambiguousness next to the wilted and rumpled hammock. _He wasn't going to stick around and put forth convincing arguments?_ said something small within her. There was no sign that someone else had been there now, just Alice and her pillows and her books. She waited and started to feel the uncomfortable, pushing irresistibility of the notion to go after him, as if the way he walked off swept something along with him, a motion to vamoose which she had rejected.

"_Bloody--_" She stumbled as if pulled forward by a string connected to her solar plexus before she stamped her foot and crossed her arms in petulance. Listening carefully, she could detect no crashing in the trees beyond, nor could she see any large green pieces of felt poking out to reveal an idiotically superior smirk.

Alice gave an impatient sigh and grabbed her skirts before following.


	2. Chapter 2

I am borrowing and modifying characters from Brianna and Rain's comic. There are probably also rights involved with Disney and someone named Lewis Carroll, who I can't imitate though it would be sincere if I could. Regarding references: sometimes I pay homage to other people's work by inserting snippets of phrases or other things. It's theirs if you find it.

I honestly wanted to post this much earlier, but I have graduated and am working an 8-5 job without a computer, so there is limited time and only so much will to go around. I know it's only been a month, but I hate waiting for updates as much as anyone. Thanks for reading.

I met a fool i' the forest,  
A motley fool. _"As You Like It", Act 1 scene 7  
_

* * *

Alice stepped lightly from one rock to another, her voluminous skirts tucked firmly in one hand with her other arm struck out to the side for balance. The Hatter had taken a roundabout path to the right, and so the trees and moss underfoot were of an invariably sloping nature. Sunlight tripped down through the leaves above to splay sharp angles on the floor, but the overall air was peaceful and pleasant rather than gloomy or unsafe in some way. She had never really been through these woods before: on the grounds near the true family estate everything was flat and centered around the coursing brook, but here things planed off into bits of mystery and potential in a rocky, unforgiving way.

She had not known in her youthful repose that the rabbit hole would take her somewhere else, but now she was choosing to follow in the path of madness manifest—which by the by, she thought with a sigh, she could now hear in the form of tangled talking points intermingled with a pause followed by his reactive laughter at the nonexistent joke therein. He was carrying on in quite a way with something or someone; Alice was loath to know who or what he had engaged on the topic of what turned out to be the ethics of hair growth on the Moon. Soon she caught a glimpse of orange running riot, obstructing the decency of a nearby glade, and came upon her unstable guide. The Hatter threw the rock in his hand across the clearing where it landed with a dry _clunk_ and dusted his hands together.

"Decided to join us, I see, then?" He was sitting with his back to an odd tree looking up at her for all the world like he had been lost but not known it, and could not understand someone else's irritated relief upon finding him. Alice, as it were, was not wholly sympathetic to his having left so quickly, and thought he looked a bit silly sitting with his arms around his knees, his hiked up eyebrows contrasting his shock of white hair, and a bland, wide smile across his face.

"I shan't refuse the Duchess's request for my presence," replied Alice, releasing her skirts to modestly place and smooth them back around her for the proper effect.

"Oh, was _that_ what that was?" he said, pushing and edging himself against the tree to awkwardly clamber to his feet, "I thought it was a laundry list—I did wonder why Duchess should put _you_ in charge of mopping the curtains; you certainly aren't tall enough." He paused to assess her with an upturned eyebrow. Alice did not have a response to this and instead politely handed him his hat, which had become dislodged in the unsteady upward movement. He swept it onto his head with a pop three shades lighter than a champagne cork.

"Right, then," happily continued the madman, who was now removing a large silver ring from one of his inner coat pockets. It was more of a small hoop, and had only a tiny sliver of metal hanging from the bottom. He jammed it into a knothole on the tree which had supported him previously, and pulled in a fluid motion that extended up to his shoulder and made him lean back on his heels. Slowly he seemed to drag a door out of thin air, one that creaked through every mashing fiber in the joists. It was an alternately satisfying and irritating sound that fluctuated as the door came ajar.

"I didn't know this was here," said Alice in soft wonder, peering into the darkness within and trying to discern what could be there. What surprised her, of course, was that it should be in the middle of the English countryside and not in that topsy-turvy world of endlessly illogical—or was it illogically endless?--tea parties and truculent courtiers.

"Well, it certainly wouldn't be proper to bung you down a rabbit-hole, now would it?" said the Hatter, tilting his head off to one side and flashing his teeth charmingly. He tucked the large silver ring back into his coat and bent also to gaze into the portal. Alice looked down at her skirts—no, she would not have supported the idea of crawling down through slickly packed dirt and succulent roots all for a Duchess and quite possibly a fool's errand—at this she frowned. She had few attachments to her gowns and the French lace at the bottom of her petticoat, but they were expensive and not worth ruining for the reenactment of a nearly forgotten childhood escapade. And then she remembered that although tree doors were reassuring enough, they were notably unpredictable in their ultimate destination. The fact that it was so dark within suggested that it either led anywhere or nowhere at all. Possibilities were becoming infinite, and with that grew Alice's curiosity.

"How did it get here?"

"Because it needed to be here."

"So it's only here because of me?" she gestured lightly to the gaping maw before them. He flicked his hands in an upward circle and shrugged in reply.

"I don't refuse requests from the Crown, either," he said. This set something within him, and the Hatter stepped halfway into the door, nearly disappearing as the blackness there seemed to consume rather than shade him. He stepped backward again, his hands on either side of the outer jamb, and Alice watched him frown. He looked a bit odd like this, the freckles on his nose standing in their beige detail splattered in a friendly pattern—though it was unusual to qualify epidermal anomalies through the concept of personification—across his round nose and the faint laugh lines near his mouth cast into shadow by the sunlight from above.

"Isn't there a room beyond?"

"No." The Hatter was still staring into the tree and sounded surprised at his own discovery.

"What?" Alice too was surprised, but could not have explained why this feeling ran so deeply.

"While I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree," said the Hatter, reaching into his coat once more to draw out and inspect the tiny chunk of metal, "This one has proven itself to be abominably rude—boorish, churlish, and dare I even say it, a stodgy codger. I expected better of you," the Hatter finished at the tree, shaking his head. Alice stared at him, her thoughts of reason gone kaput.

"What do we do?" she asked. A bird overhead was twittering in hysterical ire at something. The Hatter pulled a cup and saucer from his sleeve and slurped noisily before chucking them abruptly over his shoulder, where they crashed against a tree trunk and shocked the offending bird into bewildered stillness.

"We are going to plant ourselves here quite securely and give this blighter the opportunity to mash the old brain over what it's done. Now: I'll glare at it in fatherly disapproval whilst assuming a threatening stance; you stand akimbo and start listing reasons why it should be ashamed of itself in a shrieky voice." He proceeded quite accurately, apparently fully assured that she would follow in his wake. Alice pursed her lips with no intention of disciplining a tree with a giant hole in its side, and the two fell silent for a while, letting the sound of other overly buoyant birds above count out the seconds, minutes, and half hour.

"I shall not be able to sit here all afternoon, you know," she finally said with a bit of loftiness, looking up from between her fingers where they were holding up her head. The Hatter was now sitting on a rock near the tree as well, his fist pushing his cheek so that it squinched up into one eye. It was a look of enduring irritation but singularly faltering patience, and gave him the air of a six year old boy who has been denied a clockwork train or something. He gathered his mental faculties and began to glare with more pronounced determination. The tree was bravely stoic, however, and remained inert despite his best attempts at intimidation.

"This is becoming most trying, Mr. Hatter," she said more loudly. Alice felt a curl begin behind her navel and realized she hadn't eaten since early that morning. The pieces of light on the forest floor were shaded in sloping angles now. He leaned his head forward and began to appear as like a sporting dog remarking upon a badly hidden quail. _Concentrating_. This was rather serious business. Serious business regarding a tree. And something about quails? The Hatter couldn't remember now. Maybe a master painter would come along and see how gloriously concentrate he looked, pointing his round nose at something very important. He would paint in his masterly way, and both of them would make a ludicrous amount of money. He called it _Apostatic Contemplation_, which sounded rather good in an educated way, but also because the sound of the words together was crisp, yet soothing. Sort of like tea, really. The Hatter grinned briefly. _Tea_.

Conversely, and mere inches away, Alice was becoming rather put out by all of this. "I have absolutely no idea why you've come here, or even the point of this _silly_ mission," she continued.

"Brilliant," he replied in self-adoration, and wondered if the Master would paint him holding his teapot. This would add an element of drama—because, who holds a teapot while glaring at a tree? It was a very clever consideration, he thought. But then, he was a very clever man. The Hatter stopped glaring for a moment to take up an expression of thoughtful happiness at this reassuring thought. Yes, he was awfully clever. That master painter would be along any minute and truly capture his victorious battle against a recalcitrant tree. But only if he won. _Right, then, serious business._ The Hatter repositioned his threatening stare, but forgot to remove the smile at that point and began to look like an iniquitous duck plotting the hunter's gun-shaped demise.

Alice did not think so—she thought he looked more like a moron. "Staring at that tree for the rest of the afternoon does not help us, sir!" she finally cried in a most unladylike fashion. It was a reprehensible outburst from someone who knew better from the likes of M.E.W. Sherwood et cetera. The Hatter eventually turned his eyes on her and frowned oddly, as though he had recently discovered that the denied clockwork train was actually inside his head and its gears were beginning to churn.

"Well, what do you propose to do about it, then?" he said, a teasing tone creeping into his voice. "It's not like you've been any great shakes of help in this, you know." Alice was now veering dangerously close to full-on peckishness and incivility. She slapped her hands onto the rock beneath her and bloomed upward very suddenly.

"Fine," she said, the word pinching between her lips with an emphasis on the _F_. Her accent took on a broad, insulting aspect. "If you want to waste a perfectly good afternoon and my time, I can just leave, you know. I shall go directly to the house, pack my things, and be on the evening train for Westgate, I assure you." His response was simply to look back at her, and this of course inspired Alice to a greater sense of indignation and subsequent rage. "Your precious _Duchess _should have figured out a decent way to get me back into that kingdom instead of putting _you_ in charge of royally screwing up a simple plan!" Having thus ended this diatribe, Alice once more gathered her skirts and swung round at full force.

Only to smack into something straight before her. The forceful inertia of her heavy dress completed the circular upheaval, and she gasped in surprise and at having the wind knocked out of her as it pushed her further into the large brick wall which had suddenly, and somewhat improbably, materialized. This was a rather surprising new thing, and Alice took a few moments to feel the hardened clay beneath her fingertips—it was certainly real, with rough white mortar separating the roan blocks, and even bits of dead plant growth clinging to both. This was nothing short of betrayal on the part of the forest, and Alice pressed her palms into the wall, her mouth slightly open in, well, shock.

"Ah, that clinched it," said the Hatter from behind her. His voice was once more cheerful, and she turned her head without moving away from the blockade to see him gathering up his hat and looking about blithely. The Hatter stepped up the rocks toward Alice and the wall and put his hand out against it. "I'd forgotten that part," he said, and smiled at her before sipping from a purple cup he slipped from his left pocket.

"I don't understand; what happened?" The Hatter enjoyed the taste before he replied.

"You can't want to be at home while you're at home. If you're knocking about the house at loose ends, surely you would want to be somewhere else?" He paused to sip his tea again and appeared to be waiting for her response.

" I ...suppose... so," she said in pieces, treading carefully lest the quiet brook turn to raging whitewater.

"Right, so if you've got off to that somewhere else, you aren't at home, eh?"

"Yes, but--"

"We therefore can reasonably conclude that the only way you can want to be at home is if you're at another destination, and that the only way you can be at another destination, then, is if you're feeling a bit homesick. Thus, etc.--" and he waved his hand in a little circle triumphantly. It was very odd logic indeed.

"So we've already arrived," said Alice, looking around her for signs of change—she supposed she would have known the place by red trees and purple grass, but saw no difference between the woods beyond the house and wherever they were now. There were no wild colors or sounds apart from the man beside her and the orange coat announcing—no, screaming, his presence at the top of its lungs.

"You arrived before you left," replied the Hatter, who was inspecting the gaping tree once more. "And you must go forward before you can go back, I daresay, because where you are is where you've gone yet and shan't go for a time still." Alice thought about this and was of the opinion that it would be better to not respond. Her desire to maintain form, dignity, and at the very least, sanity, had not blunted in degree. That, and she was quite starving.

"I'm trapped," was all she said.

"No, no you're not!" replied the man in a sweepingly reassuring way, sloshing the tea about. Alice felt the situation seemed perfectly obvious.

"How am I supposed to get back to the house with a wall here?" The Hatter palmed his arms out to either side and began to inchingly balance his way across a set of larger rocks that hedged the wall. Alice could but follow. The proxy garden path he led her down eventually revealed a gap in the bricking in the form of a green garden gate too tall to peer over. It lacked hinges and a latch.

"Through there, you see?" said the Hatter, "You pass beyond the garden gate, and there you are again." Alice pressed the gate and met with no small amount of resistance. She felt like pushing against any of the rest of the brick wall.

"I don't understand," she murmured to herself.

"What isn't to understand? You've passed beyond the -gate and now we have only to seek out the -party. Garden- are the worst kind; I do prefer a tea- but unfortunately they don't go well with brick walls, rather tasteless except for the mortar which surprisingly has a bit of unexpected sweetness," his voice faded as he disappeared from her view. Alice took one last look at the green door and followed at a soft clip.

Who was she to question something when she had willingly gone along with him? Or was it her right and duty as an individual to hold out against the tide of change and disruption? Could she trust the Hatter in his charge? He had a very trying nature that grated away at large chunks of her patience, but he did seem to have things well in hand for the moment, at least. Perhaps he did have some redeeming quality. Surely the Duchess felt as much, otherwise he would not be... she glanced about her person to find him rapping one of his knuckles against another tree before pressing his ear up to it. He would not be larking about in such a fashion if the Duchess had not felt there were some measure of responsibility to be drawn from his likely shallow reserves, she thought dryly.

"Has the tree changed? Nothing else has; I should think we were in England but for that wall." She trod near, shifting her skirts and looking high into the silent trees.

"It is a room. Now, anyway." He sounded very far away of a sudden, though he had drawn his head out of the portal.

"What's inside?" She could hear herself, but it was as if she were speaking through a long tube, for there was something else she could hear, better than either of their voices though it was far off yet. It was the kind of noise that was a cross between a distant beehive and the noise one makes when blowing bubbles through a straw into a glass of milk. Of course she did not know the latter sound given her manners, but nevertheless would have categorized the combination of these as strange indeed.

"Come, then, let's not be wasteful of the moment—I'm famished! Putting it splendidly, I declare: 'What, and the soul alone deteriorates?' Let us off to feasts and speeches, my good woman," he cried, yanking her back into the clearing and the task before them.

"What--" was as far as she got before her question turned into a squeal of surprise as the Hatter pushed her into the tree and began to heave the door shut, slipping between the latch just as it closed of its own weight. It was very close inside, as Alice realized there was naught to the room but the circumference of the tree; she was pressed up against something that felt suspiciously like a garish velveteen coat blessedly missing its orange in the lack of light. Also there was something teapot-shaped making her left arm very uncomfortable. Lemon and cinnamon, she thought.

"What was that?"

"Hmm?" His voice was near but vague.  
"That sound. What was it?" There was a clicking sound echoing around her like notches on a pair of circular bands twisting in opposite directions.

"Oh, all sorts of creatures live in these woods. Could be another animal," he said.

"What sort, do you think?"

"I'm not the utmost authority on sounds and their sources; you'll have to ask the Duchess, I'm sure she could find someone to... what's-it-all, analyze and define it for you. Like a field book: _The Official Aural Society's Handbook to the Greater Noises of Eastern England and the Surrounding Underground_. Frightful good title, if I may say so myself..."

"But what sort of—OW!" she screeched and began to jump up and down on one foot. This led to a loud and fierce altercation, hindered by their inability to see one another or actually move.

"Ow, you're pushing me!" he hollered back.

"Well, you stomped on my toes!"

"Not my fault—your skirts are humongous!"

"So are your shoes!"

"My shoes are the apex of form and style; it's that ostrich cage bolted to your backside that's causing all the problems--" here there were squawking cries of outrage and indignation which he chose to ignore "it's like another person in here, and these trees are only meant for two!"

"Well, if you wouldn't stand so close to me _maybe I could have some room to breathe!_" He muttered something under his breath about women being filled with divine fire before extricating himself with a sigh of release followed by a loudly pointed gasp for air from between her bustle and the wall. Alice squeezed her arm up close to her head and tried to fan herself, but got halfway there before she swatted his lapel. This would have prompted more exclamation points and dramatic accusations but for the fact that the Hatter was shifting purposefully, moving his arms around and apparently slapping at the walls in an effort to make something happen.

"I say, close to the Scroobious Road but not so far as the Lane, mind you," called up the Hatter somewhere near her forehead.

"What are you doing?" she asked the air above her.

"Directional formalities," it replied. "They haven't got them so they interpret envisages yet, and you have to be quite clear otherwise they're apt to just go slogging off anywhere they please." Alice blinked with her mouth open, again somewhat fish-like, but inhabiting a much darker part of the ocean. "Which would be fine otherwise," said the Hatter in a strained voice (he was reaching upward to hit the walls some more for good measure) "Except for we need to be somewhere with due expediency." A long arc of light began to appear somewhere in front of her, and Alice felt the Hatter fall away as he leaned into the door and outer beyond. She blinked into the white there and stepped back onto grass and stones.

"Why, it looks just the same!" she cried, turning round to see him closing the portal for good. His shoulder straight-lanced against the tree, he paused from his leaning to glance around.

"No, we're definitely close to the beloved table," he called back. "Try walking forward a bit." She did so, stepping past a large tree, and there found a curving sidewalk in gentle esses painted blue and white. It continued in both directions, though she could not see where it led for the trees positioned at just the right curve. He was at her side, took her upper arm in hand and began walking her along.

"This is going to be a perfectly decent teatime, my girl," he said blithely. They continued to careen back and forth across the bricking, weaving between trees with signs carelessly nailed to their bark. _Find yourself over here_, said one pointing to the left. _No, you're here_, said the one next to it pointing to the ground. _Quick, what's that up there?!_ shrieked one pointing into the canopy of trees, where another sign waited with _Made you look_.

Bending at a low-hanging branch, Alice remembered how to stop as the Hatter pulled up short before a small box hedge. Craning her neck beyond she could see past the rectangular leaves another small path, painted dark purple, sketching its way further inward of the darkness. He swung the bush open like a picket fence gate, and Alice managed to squeeze through before he vaulted one leg and then the other over it.

The darker path itself led around another corner to open out onto a large lawn with a table spread out before a small house. The table itself was very large, but was without its customary myriad smoking teapots and saucers of jam—rather its creaking came from the severe oddity of having so many elbows placed upon it at the moment. Clustered at one end were a group of people intently leaning toward the short side, engaged in deep conversation with the backs of their heads turned toward the path. Alice could not tell how many there were, for there were both ladies and gentlemen there, and where one woman's skirts ended another man's smoking jacket began. There was movement, and a break in the heads revealed a rabbit in a tailored coat with a bow tie standing on the flat top surface.

"HATTER!" he bellowed as a rabbit shouldn't.

"HARE!" cried back the Hatter in amusement. The Hare put his paws behind his back and gave a few grave bounces forward to meet their steps. He gave Alice an up-down up-down glance and nodded.

"This the girl?" he said.

"Oh yes," began the Hatter. He seemed poised to relate the entire account of what had transpired in hammock, glade, and lane, but the Hare cut him off at the knees with an articulate throat clearing and long-considered remark.

"Stand by to counsel and advise, my dear boy. The plot has thickened."

"How?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean, thickened how? Thickened like gelatin or thickened like starch and water, except for that when you grab at the stuff it's quite turgid but the instant you pause to ponder at life it turns back into water. I wonder if you could walk on it. The mind does boggle at a thing," he said awefully.

"Like gelatin," said the Hare. "Setting quick and cold—and we're mired in the middle of it."

"Dear dear," said the Hatter. The situation was gathering drama in a very dramatic fashion.

"What's happened?" said Alice. The Hare gave her a quick glance.

"It's quite bad," said the Hare.

"How bad?" immediately countered the Hatter.

"Tensions are running high and words like _mutiny_ and _eggplant _are being tossed about rather lightly in my opinion—I can't hold these people for much longer."

"My God, man, what is it?!" They leaned forward to hear what he had to say next.

"We've run out of cheese muffins."


	3. Chapter 3

I hope some of you are still out there—putting together how everything is going to work out in the end has been tricky, but I've finally got it. If things seem to be moving slowly, bear with me—some minor things here and there are very important to the plot later. There are some obvious references in this one, but if you can identify Alice's story I'll be impressed. Thanks very much for the reviews so far—they do help keep motivation high!

If you'd like to see some artwork that influenced some of the scenes and descriptions, there is a link on the author profile page. The time period is in the 1870's, but with the addition of some things from the future in a steam punk way.

* * *

** The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment. - Dorothy Nevill**

** Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity. - G.K. Chesterton  
**

It happens in life that some things really must be considered more than others. It must be considered that Alice felt strange in a new place, and that she felt mixed twinges of doubt and excitement over travel. She did not know what was coming, but the darkening leaves in the cloistered front lawn gave her pause to recognize an air of duality about the place, of dreadful seclusion and delicious closeness. It must be considered that the March Hare was not well in his compact head and believed that the people at the other edge of his table were in league to make Rabbit Coq au Vin for the evening, when truly they only desired to play Baccarat but were unable to find a sixth deck of cards. It must be also considered that what the Mad Hatter kept in his hat was an unscrutable paradox; even now he was pulling a small cake made with Gouda from its interior and handing it to Alice, who was conveniently very hungry.

At this point the group of heads clustered in conference began to break apart and Alice could see distinct figures in their midst. Where there had first seemed to be nine ladies and seven gentlemen, she could now plainly see that there were five ladies and four gentlemen, which seemed more reasonable despite the remaining imbalance. The March Hare had taken to definitively ignoring them, although his attempts at putting his nose higher and higher into the air as time went on became increasingly ridiculous.

The Hatter, meanwhile, began to draw brightly frosted biscuits from beneath his cuffs and was tossing them about in his palm, apparently reading them like runes. The men from the table took as one their leave of the ladies and milled over to watch. As they ambled past her, Alice saw that the gentlemen were perfectly precise, striking their dark hair and handsomely vague features against the white-hot insanity of the two best friends beyond. Seeing that her guide and his compatriot would not perform their civil duties in introducing her to the ladies, she hovered nearby to watch and listen to their conversation.

The only apparent distinguishing feature amongst the women, besides their hair, seemed to be the color of their dresses Although they seemed individuals enough, their high and thinly curved eyebrows lent them an air of staged similarity—as if they had been crafted from a single perfect idea of what a lady should be. Alice looked down at her own muddied blue skirts, plain and unsightly in contrast to the fine silk pin tucks and ruffles arranged so daintily about them. One of the ladies was admiring her reflection in a spoon while the others talked quietly, apparently undisturbed by this strange display. Alice thought this was odd, until a movement towards the far end alerted her to the fact that a sixth woman had been asleep with her head on the table. She sat up to yawn very in a graceful and ladylike fashion, and the four who were in conversation turned to her.

"Do stop yawning so," said a very pale girl with black hair, "I imagine I should--" and then she too put a pure white hand up to her mouth to politely yawn as well. A blonde girl in gray shook her head at both of them.

"There you go again. It's your fault if you can't get enough sleep, you know," she said with gentle reproach. The recenty awakened lady at the far end of the table, who was the tallest and blonde as well, measured her and spoke with quiet dignity.

"You speak highly considering how late you stay out sometimes."

"I have my limitations, you know," replied the shorter girl.

"Which you flaunt shamelessly," was the answer with a bit of a smirk. The blonde in gray was looking slightly haughty until the the black haired girl spoke again with genteel authority.

"I insist we not fight, I find disagreement so distasteful."Alice was about to turn away to rejoin the Hatter when the girl with the spoon lifted a thick red lock of hair out of her eyes and saw her standing there.

"Who're you?" she said curiously. Five other perfect heads swiveled simultaneously to gaze placidly upon the newcomer, who blushed deeply at the attention.

"How do you do--" began Alice, dipping into a curtsy, but a second girl with black hair in a plait cut her off.

"Is that the girl the Hatter said he was bringing back? She's so small, I hardly would have thought she'd have come back after what happened--"

"Don't stare at her, she could be shy," admonished the taller blonde, who was now making a strange motion by pulling her arm up above her head and snapping it down suddenly, apparently trying to exorcise something from it. It shimmered a vague blue in the dappled sunlight.

"Who cares? She's new and exciting," said the redhead, plopping her elbows onto the table and giving Alice a good long _look_. The first black-haired girl, who wore a red ribbon, smiled kindly.

"Another to join our ranks! Surely the Duchess will title you excellently, for she has confided to me that she has great faith in you. We are all princesses here, and the Duchess named us each." Alice wondered vaguely if this was the hostess of the assembly or if she had designated herself so; her giving away details to a total stranger like Alice made her seem both amiable and naively forward at once.

"Title? But my name--"

"Do tell us a story," interrupted the only brunette, who had apparently not heard Alice speak. "I'm sure you know so many, and they will be absolutely enthralling. We have already told each other all the stories we know." She leaned forward and looked at Alice with unconcealed enthusiasm.

"Yes, do tell us a tale," said the blonde in gray, who had perked up considerably since the near-altercation.

"What a thoughtful idea, my dear," said the taller blonde, who was frowning and adjusting her pink sleeve.

"Of course," said the brunette in reply. "It's only polite to entertain one's guests. After all, I like nothing better than an excellent story—preferably of grand love and heroic rescue." There was general consensus at this.

"But we haven't even introduced ourselves yet," began Alice, feeling flustered. She did not care to argue the fact that she was more of a guest than they were at this point, and more importantly she felt it was uncommonly rude to demand stories of someone who was new at the table. Her efforts at beginning a pleasant and civil conversation were rapidly turning to memories of interruptions and abrupt scope shifts, and Alice did not feel she had the patience to deal with women who were probably very much like her sisters in their conversational subject matter.

"That is no concern," said the girl with the black plait airily. She was dressed in green and had a kind, though lofty, air. "The Duchess will give you a proper title when you meet her anyway, and it certainly isn't as if you don't belong here, you know. You cannot be unimportant if the Duchess has summoned you herself. But your story..." They were expectant, and there seemed to be no immediate reprieve from Alice's guide, who was now juggling the biscuits and shouting at the Hare, who was catching them in his mouth with unconcealed delight. The gentlemen who had left the table had begun to talk amongst themselves and a few were ambling toward the white gate at the end of the lawn. Perhaps these women would make better companions for the present than _that_, she told herself.

"Please, you _must_ tell us a story, we do _love_ stories," insisted the redhead with a charmingly innocent smile. The black-haired hostess pulled out a seat for Alice and settled her into it with ease. Seeing that there was no true alternative, Alice gazed at the faces around her and thought for a moment.

"Well, this story begins--"

"No, you must start it properly," interrupted one of the ladies.

"How shall I start, then?"

"_Once upon a time_," said the brunette as if this had been perfectly obvious from the outset.

"Very well," said Alice.

_Once upon a time, in a mysterious land very far away, there lived a very beautiful and very cold Princess. She was not cold because she lived in wintry climes: her chilly nature stemmed from a law of the land, which required that if a Prince wished to marry her, he must correctly answer three riddles she would offer or be risk a beheading at first moonlight._

_The poor Prince of Persia had been the most recent man to vie for her heart, but he had failed, and the crowds outside of the imperial palace were clamoring to see the spectacle sure to unfold. Surging forward, the peasants there did not take notice of a blind old man who was pushed to the ground in the excitement. His slave girl cried out for help and gained the notice of a young man nearby, who recognized the old man as his own father, the deposed king of a nearby land. _

_The young prince and his royal father were overjoyed to have met once more, but the prince urged his father and companion not to speak of their aristocracy, for the very people who had seized and burned their homeland were none other than the royals living in the palace before them, and the young man feared his own capture as well. _

_Soon the crowd began to scream and shake the palace gates as the moon rose. The young Prince of Persia was brought out, and there was suddenly silence. He was handsome, very handsome indeed, and the crowd and the unknown prince among them were amazed at his beauty. Voices began to rise calling out to the Princess for clemency, begging her to spare the life of one so pure and perfect. The Princess herself stepped forward, and the prince in the crowd soon found himself calling out to her, for she was so pale and beautiful in the moonlight that he had fallen madly in love with her. But the Princess ignored their cries and let the execution continue, standing so very still that the prince could not take his eyes from her. He did not notice when the crowd wailed in unison: the Prince of Persia was dead._

_The Princess was about to return to her palace when the unknown prince ran forward and smashed the gong at the palace gates, signaling that he would challenge the Princess for her hand in marriage. The palace advisors shook their heads cynically in the knowledge that another man would lose his head over the beautiful young woman, and the exiled king and his slave girl wept at the thought of losing their prince. However, the prince was much too in love with the Princess in the window high above, who only stared down at him in reply to the gong. _

_The next day the grand high emperor of the land warned the prince of the price he would pay for losing to his daughter and urged him to leave the palace with his head still attached, an offer which the prince refused. Soon the Princess entered, and spoke._

_"Many years ago, my ancestress was ravished and murdered by a foreigner, and as my revenge, I have sworn never to let any man possess me. You must correctly answer my three riddles or I shall have your head removed. I do not wish you good luck, for I know you will die as the others have before you." The prince did not reply to this, as he was enraptured by her beauty, which was even greater up close than it had been from the window outside. _

_"My first riddle is this: What is born each night and dies at dawn?" _

_"Hope." The Princess did not blink._

_"What flickers red and warm like a flame, but is not fire?"_

_"Blood." Now she was shaken, for no man had been able to answer this before. She steeled herself in anger, and spoke again._

_"What is like ice, but burns like fire?" The prince paused to think, and the Princess smiled and began to taunt him, saying that she would enjoy the look of his head cleaved on one of the pikes outside her palace. His eyes wide, the prince suddenly cried out her very own name! The Princess screamed her anger in defeat and threw herself at her father's mercy, begging him not to let the stranger take her away. But the emperor admonished her, for she was bound to marry the man who had bested her riddles. The prince turned to the Princess and gave her a proposal. He knew her name, but she did not know his. "Bring me my name before sunrise, and at sunrise, I will die." The Princess agreed. _

_All night, the heralds proclaimed the will of the Princess: that none should sleep, and death would be the penalty for all the citizens of the royal city if they could not bring her the name of her betrothed before sunrise. The prince awaited the dawn and his victory, knowing that the Princess herself would not sleep either. _

_Having seen the exiled king and his slave girl with the prince, the royal advisors dragged them forward to be threatened and tortured for his name. The slave girl proclaimed her knowledge of the name, and struggled against the cruelty of the advisors. But at last, she died nobly with her secret, stabbing herself before the Princess could defeat her master's son. The prince reproached the Princess for her cruelty, and kissed her despite her resistance. _

_"You will love me, and I shall win," he told her. At first, the Princess felt disgust at his kiss, but soon found herself turning toward passion and affection for the young stranger who was so persistent. Soon the darkened sky began to lighten into gray. The night was ending, and still the Princess did not know her betrothed's true name. Finding herself in love, she asked him to take his secret and leave her city before he broke her heart, but the prince instead softly whispered his name into her ear. She could do what she would with his name now—order him killed as she had so many before, or spare his life and live in happiness with the first man she loved. _

_At dawn, the Princess led the prince toward her father's throne, declaring that she knew his name before all others. At the emperor's command to hear it spoken, the Princess cried, "It is love!" sending the crowds outside the palace into cheers of rapture for the two lovers. _

Alice looked around her once more and saw that her audience was still looking at her, waiting.

"That is the end of the story," she explained.

"Oh!" cried the brunette, sitting back in her chair, looking contemplative.

"That was quite good," said the girl in green.

"Bit of an abrupt ending, though," said someone.

"How romantic," sighed the shorter blonde, "I wish my prince would have told me his true name like that."

"That was an excellent story," said the redhead to Alice, "But don't you feel badly about all those other princes who were killed?"

"Yes," said the taller blonde, "I wouldn't have expected them to die so harshly, you do seem like such a sweet girl."

"I beg your pardon?" said Alice. The princesses were growing slightly pedantic in their analysis of her yarn, and Alice felt that although she appreciated the finer points of literary criticism, she had not come to this world to have her stories picked apart.

"In your tale you had so many people killed so... so gruesomely!" said the hostess with black hair. "Surely you see the joys of true love now that you and your prince have found one another."

"Prince?"

"It is a shame that so many other people had to die, but I'm sure it is no small comfort to her that true love conquers feelings of isolation and haughtiness," the girl in green was saying.

"True; it would have been sad had she herself died in the end," replied the redhead thoughtfully.

"I'm sorry; prince?" said Alice again.

"Yes, your prince from the story," said the brunette.

"I have no prince." This had the effect of catching each of the royal ladies in various states of shocked pause around the table: the two blondes leaned together in suspended animation, one still fiddling with her blue sleeve; the redhead with her mouth popped open breathing foggily onto the spoon, and the brunette and girl in green goggling at her like fish. The hostess came to life first.

"You are planning your wedding to him, then. He will be your prince." Her solution seemed to mollify a few of the concerned lovely faces.

"No."

"I am afraid we do not understand; are you not the princess of your tale?"

"No, it was only a story, it wasn't real." This had an even greater effect than before, producing something akin to graceful and polite outrage.

"_Only_ a story!" cried the brunette.

"Heaven forbid--!"

"How could she say such a thing?"

"Well, a story that is worth discussing and considering, to be sure—one could write endlessly on the subject of the female enduring conflict between domesticity and potential disillusionment," said Alice soothingly, for she did not wish to make so many strangers angry and she enjoyed well-crafted stories too, "but it is a story nonetheless. It is not about me, I am--"

"My dear," said the black-haired hostess gravely, placing a smooth white hand upon Alice's arm, "Stories are very powerful things. They are not to be treated so lightly as mere artifacts for study. They have a very real purpose, do you not see that?"

"They must entertain and amuse, and call us away from the constraints of daily life," pointed out the other black-plaited princess.

"Tales of romance and adventure to inspire us toward greater stations in life," said the brunette. The taller blonde nodded.

"Stories to remind us of our goals and help us in our persistence."

"They explain other people's lives and motivations," the redhead murmured.

"Sometimes they are the only things that support us in our hour of need," said the small blonde. There was a strange pause, and Alice felt as if she had cut to the very center of the princesses seated there. They too seemed to recognize that something had passed between all of them together, but it is impossible to retrieve the truth as it pours forth, and the hostess seemed to be futilely pushing back against a torrent of it now.

"So you see," she said, "It is rather strange to us that you would speak of your own story in such a way. Perhaps you are a humble sort of girl," she said at Alice's protestations, "But truly, a princess deserves to have her tale repeated—why else would she be honored with such rewards as princessdom provides?"

"I suppose, yes."

"I'm sure the March Hare has whole drawerfuls of ribbon inside his snug little house; surely he would not mind if we borrowed some." The six of them rose to Alice's bemused protestations, but they frog-marched her into the house in such a delicate fashion that she was in no state to reply. Indeed, there was little she could do but feel a keen sense of awareness of her station in life and the desire to be among these clearly revered and pampered ladies.

The interior of the March Hare's house, Alice realized as the brunette used a thin silver rod to button up a pair of small-turned boots onto her feet, was as one would expect. The doorways were low and narrow, and the interior, though somewhat dark and burrowy, did have a certain eccentric quality evident in the mixture of purple and yellow paint across the walls. The only room that did not seem to match what she had seen of the rest of the house upon her passing through was a serious looking library, which she could see a tiny sliver of through the end of the hallway. Its large and imposing features clashed dreadfully with the rest of the décor; somehow she preferred the Hare's garish style to the mysterious room there.

The six women and their full, filling skirts took more pressing places in her mind, particularly the speed and fashion with which they moved. As if her function were a game, the redhead was untangling Alice's sausage curls with an enthusiasm bordering on ferocity, and, she suspected, a tool other than a proper brush. The lady in green, however, had taken a cheesecloth to Alice's face, muttering about the smudges of dirt on her nose.

"Gray, I think," said the taller blonde.

"No, that is far too plain."

"I think it is very mysterious—unexpected. What would you suggest?"

"Black." This was said with a clear smile in the hostess's voice.

"Black? Why not white? Or is that too plain as well?"

"You're only saying that to make me cross."

"Why must it be black? She would look equally handsome in white."

"Let her wear her own apparel if she wishes; perhaps she would feel more as herself that way," said the smaller blonde from where she sat stitching a new lace border onto Alice's blue warp.

"What do you think?" said the distinguished blonde. Alice felt a brief flash of embarrassment over the scene: six obviously well cared for princesses actually working to bestow just enough veneer to make her passing. She suddenly wanted to return home very much to avoid answering.

"She is working very hard to... mend the gown. If that is acceptble, I--"

"I think the Duchess will be pleased to have you in her House," said the dark-haired hostess, and wove a black ribbon into Alice's freshly released curls. "At the very least, she ought to be grateful, since you look as fine as one of her courtiers."

"Thank you," said Alice, feeling deceitful of the pale princess's approving gaze.

"You don't understand now," the taller blonde told her quietly as they stood outside once more, "But you will. No matter what happens, keep moving forward. A princess does not give up." Her freshly-made companion weighed her advice before speaking. It was a lie to leave these well-intentioned women in the dark, especially given their kindness, but her importance to the Duchess perhaps hung on the older woman's fleeting impression of Alice, and she wanted to give as little idea of being useless as possible. She looked at the princess and took a breath before putting forth an answer.

"I feel very much obliged to you all, especially after you have treated me so well," Alice began, "But you must know that I'm not a--"

"Not a what? A nascently pugilistic flamingo who had his heart set on barristerdom?"

"I had a bridge partner inflicted with that once." Alice turned to see that white-haired and white hared insanity were standing close at hand.

"Certainly not an enviable issue, he would have a dreadful time commiting himself to a right or left hook," said the Hatter, wrinkling his freckled nose. The biscuits were gone from his hands, and in their place were telling trails of crumbs up the Hare's collar and across his snout, while the Hatter's gloves remained frosty and busy with the lavender cup of tea he was holding.

"There you are," said Alice, wondering if this was an interruption or salvation. "When does Mr. Hare begin passing out hot toddys and room keys?"

"The Hare has no intention of ever letting any of us go—this is a perpetual party, you see, but it is conveniently mobile in that we simply pick up the conversation once more at someone else's house when their dishes happen to be clean and their supply of exotic jams reasonably stocked. Now watch this draught." He paused for a long pull of tea and the Hare nodded sagely.

A few of the women had broken away from them and Alice watched with her arms folded as they stooped in the thin waist-high lilies that grew in the lawn, taking up white paper lanterns from the grass and lighting them with long, whippy punks. The skimming glow as the flames came into being made their faces indistinguishable from another—molds among countless carnations that held the same expression and shadows.

"Well, I suppose we had better done, then." He tipped his hat—which required more of a swing than a tip—and quickly palmed the teacup. "Good evening, princesses."

"Good evening, Mr. Hatter," said the dark-haired hostess in her sweetly even voice. "Do take care of our lovely friend here, she is such a sweet girl and we would not see any harm come to her."

"Hang those lanterns high," said the Hatter by way of parting. He and the lady looked at one another momentarily. Her face, too, glowed in the distant lights, and though it was just before twilight, the stand of trees made the carved out hollows in her cheekbones smooth, but not quite free of worry, Alice could see. The Hatter seemed as though he was going to continue, but the lady before him smiled once more and murmured her farewell.

"I will see you past the lane," said the Hare, and trippingly bounced ahead.

"Goodbye, goodbye!" they called out in their chorusing pretty voices to Alice as the Hatter took her arm once more and ambled them toward the gate. Alice waved politely and turned toward the road, the greenish twilight through the leaves marking their repeating angles onto her face.

"Do you think the Duchess will approve of me?" she said after a few steps.

"Approve of you for what? Appointment to her agency for secret protection? That would never work, you are too obvious. You stick out like a purple bunion—though perhaps that is her secret motive. Put her where everyone can see her so they couldn't _possibly_ suspect anything," said the Hatter thoughtfully to himself.

"No, she wants you to investigate some goings-on," said the Hare casually with his paws folded behind his back. "Something about someone missing--" He cut off screechingly as the Hatter bore down on him with a bulbous stare indicating the significance of this mistake. The Hare bared his teeth in an apologetic grimace and hid behind Alice's ample skirts.

"Someone's missing?" said Alice. He stared at the deeply violet sky and trees in a very obvious fashion to avoid looking at her. Her voice took on a higher pitch. "_Multiple_ people are missing?"

"Dear me, you were right about this one," she heard the Hare murmur. The Hatter's expression was supplicant and condoling very suddenly as he held up his palms at her.

"It is nothing to be alarmed about, just a few souls here and there who've suddenly left their houses and worldly possessions in a perfect sort of frozen stasis while they've slattered away and haven't told anyone where they've gone—maybe, _maybe!_ Maybe they've all gone off on a round-the-world tour and will be back with souvenirs soon enough. I bet I'll get a teapot, I _always_ get a teapot, you know, never fails but I have a teapot from almost every country there is and I've got a whole room full of them and some of them are quite unique, one is shaped like an _octopus_ and there's another that comes apart into quadrants even when the tea is inside which is supposed to be physically impossible so I think there might be cosmic interference--"

"I think I had better leave straightaway," said Alice firmly. The Hatter curled his outstretched hands into loose balls and cringed as the Hare took this brass opportunity to flash taupely away to his garden gate.


	4. Chapter 4

Lewis Carroll made them, Walt Disney moved them, Brianna and Rain reincarnated them. 

Thanks to everyone for making the road to more updates smoother by paving it with kind reviews—they make excellent motivation.

Here are some clues: Kingdom of Ingary, a video game, a famous Invasion song. In the last chapter Alice told the story part of a famous opera that was never finished because its composer died suddenly—your guesses are encouraged. For those of you who recognized the princesses, well done!

* * *

Let us go singing as far as we go: the road will be less tedious.

Virgil

As the sun's reflection over the curvature of the landscape made its final curtain call, crickets began tuning for their nightly symphony, and the trees rustled with the sound of birds tucking up for an evening's repose. Before the Chair could strike its first A, however, a rich and round voice echoed throughout, singing quite unabashedly and without fear of judgement unto itself. The crickets fell perfectly but momentarily silent out of stunned respect, as if an operatic genius had maddeningly decided to begin the performance before the crowd was fully seated.

_"And if you remain callous and obdurate, I_

_Shall perish as he did, and you will know why!_

_Though I probably shall not exCLAIM as I die--"_

There was an unnatural gap in the tune as the Hatter stopped where he was and gestured toward Alice very theatrically, moving both arms in a great sweep as if to catch her from a terrific fall. Seeing her cross her arms over her chest and look off into the trees, he frowned and cleared his throat rather obviously. Despite his annoyance, the situation did call for certain measures of subtlety.

"There is another line, you see," he suggested.

"I'll not go on, it isn't proper."

"Very well, then, neither shall I." He mimiced her defiant stance, pretending to stare off into the woods haughtily but glancing at her every few seconds. "I am fully capable of standing here all night, you see, I can sleep with my eyes open." Ah. He held the trump card. Being late to a reception in court would be unparalleled disaster, and so Alice weighed her options carefully. She could either strike out on a dim path to some royal house she had never been to in a strange and unforgiving land, or remain with her increasingly irritating companion and endure—well, not so much endure _his_ singing, which was not unpleasant—endure being forced to sing the response to every silly verse he could come up with. And his knowledge was infinite, it seemed. She had sung everything from obscure school hymns to bawdy tunes she dared not concentrate on too lengthily.

The whole thing was most unbecoming, even if they were alone—which, come to think of it, was even more inappropriate. Acting as the Hatter's Chorus was of immediate importance, however, in the current situation. She ticked a diagonal in the box marked "Sing" and chose her fate with a sigh. The Hatter plucked himself from a glazed stare, apparently demonstrating his open-eyed sleeping talent, to look gleefully anticipant, beyond what her abilities really ought to have yielded from an audience. Alice was not in a singing mood, even if it was light opera, and so the lyric came out for the ninth time in a flat, monotonic utterance instead of the philosophical tone for which it was intended.

"Willow. Titwillow. Titwillow." He was thrilled at the completion of the piece, applauding them both by muffled glove.

"There, you see? The ear detects some misgivings on your part, but I think I was incandescent; the trees cry out for an encore! Seventeen encores!" They were not crying out for anything, and his supporting soprano (or at least he rather supposed she was, she _could_ be awfully shrieky at times—he really needed to encourage her to rechannel some of the noises she could make when provoked into something mellifluous and becoming) frowned in her small way.

"You are completely _ridiculous_; this is utter nonsense. I think you have gotten us lost as well..." Alice was beginning to wonder if she shouldn't abandon him altogether.

"At the very least I am not the one going about making grandiloquently dramatic announcements and then growing hysterical when to everyone's complete surprise I _apparently _meant the opposite!" He turned, raised an eyebrow at her and adopted a high-pitched and very bad imitation of her voice, adding a whiny drawl to the words there. "_I say, Mr. Hatter, you misinterpret my very meaning!_" For some reason he bounced in place as only a schoolgirl on the eve before a County Fair can, and bent his elbows to dangle his limp wrists before him._ "I only meant we should be on our way to the Duchess's house! What the Dickens do you mean by this impertinence, sir? I am most put out by such eccentricities as you display here!"_

"Really, Mr. Hatter," she muttered quietly, hoping to leave the argument they had finally finished, pre-singing, at that. There had been a brief but heated discussion about the dangers of entering a country when for some unknown reason its residents were either being destroyed or were simply leaving; either way, she was eager to know when she could find some reliable information. The Hatter had stated quite adamantly that he knew nothing direct about the source of the problem, and repeated this claim until Alice gave up asking about it altogether.

He blessedly stopped bouncing and legged it a few steps forward to catch up with her. The path before them was not completely dark, as there were a few coach lanterns inexplicably growing out of every fifth tree just at the sides of the lane. The crickets had tuned themselves into a fully pitted orchestra, with the tymphonic accompaniment of what was likely a woodpecker, and were now well in on a mazurka. Distracted by her forthcoming interview, Alice pushed aside all that lay before her in these things, and considered the questions in her head a moment before speaking.

"Is the Duchess as I remember her?" It had seemed like a perfectly reasonable beginning, but the Hatter's reply broadsided her next question with a bang.

"You do not remember her. I mean to say, she is not the same Duchess as you remember. She is different one altogether," he said before Alice could ask the obvious; Alice, who mused on this and was conflicted. Who was the Duchess to summon her if she were not the same rag-faced woman who had stooped against her shoulder so annoyingly?

"'That epos on thy hundred plates of gold', I suppose one could say." Alice stopped again, and the Hatter paused a few feet ahead of her and turned mechanically.

"Is she the primary monarch?"

"Oh, rather, of course." He picked at his cuffs and looked at her with curiosity. Curiouser and curiouser, Alice began to think, before stoppering memories of a journey gone awry. The trick, she thought, was not to become too involved in the politics of the place, but to simply answer the call of an aristocrat and be back in time for her sister's nuptials. The scenario was turning more into a hedgemaze than remaining the strictest of paths Alice had (vainly, she thought) hoped it would. Turning a new corner closer to the middle of it all, she dove further into the sordid affair at hand, and away, away from the seven-eaved house in town.

"What happened to the Queen of Hearts?"

"She got Usurped." He pronounced the word with a heavy accent on the middle syllable. "Not long ago, but it's been some time..."

"Someone managed to overthrow her? But she seemed so..." Alice paused to think of a proper word for the woman.

"...raging with the white-hot intensity of a thousand flaming suns," the Hatter finished for her. It was an accurate turn of phrase, she had to admit. The woman had been a martinet, or a tyrant, or an absurdly egomaniacal and corrupt example of what the hierarchy could be... Alice realized the Hatter had raised his eyebrows at her in waiting.

"Yes, as you have put it."

"Well, one day the Queen awoke to find that her husband, the King, who was what you might describe as a..."

"Milquetoast," she offered.

"A milquetoast, yes, had hit the sky overnight, which left us all gasping fish. Especially since he was so awfully challenged in the vertical way to begin with. Something like six feet, I last heard count, enough to tower over the old girl, who was up there herself. Anyway, she busted her lip at him, and suddenly he had her over his knee laying into her with a slipper before she knew where she was, bellowing Roshambo."

"But then what happened?"

"Along came the Duchess, who claimed she'd been in court the entire time, and announced the Queen had declared her next in line to the throne, Order of the Empire and all that. Shocking, really." "Why is that?"

"The expectation was that her sisters would have a great row over the property."

"Her sisters."

"Yes, the other Queens."

"Oh, don't tell me: Spades, Clubs, and Diamonds?"

"Ah, you know them!"

"_No_, but it would seem like an obvious conclusion."

"They are all the ruling bodies of distant lands; Spades being the one convinced of the celestial bodies being in league against her, Clubs always the first at everything, and Diamonds--"

"Wealthy and prosperous?"

"On the contrary, she was purported to be manipulative and deceitful, and possibly ordered an assassination to gain more power." Alice backpedalled to avoid imbroiling herself in further intrigue. "So, in actuality, the Duchess is the Queen..."

"And the Queen has been demoted to Duchess, is how that follows logically here."

"But why do they still keep their old titles?" The Hatter made an impatient but very neat scoff.

"If they changed their names, it would be awfully perplexing, don't you think? We wouldn't know who was the Duchess or who was the Queen—you see, for we know them as only that." He was sipping on tea again, not that she could see him very clearly in this part of the path, but a click of china let Alice know he was truly nearby, an aural lighthouse as the path turned.

"What have you to do with all of this?"

"Me? You do ask terribly many questions, madam. Weaseling me for information will not get you far; I am only a messenger in all this tricky business. I could be a spy, or I may have been lied to to protect the interests of the Crown, or perhaps I was double-blinded and _really_ told the facts, but then given suspicions as to their validity, or perhaps I am lying above everything else to you alone--"

"I'm sure the Duchess sent you as an escort for a reason."

"--thumping high number of spies and disembodied ears in this forest, could be flowing with creatures set on the latest demographic numbers from the population concensus--"

"_Census_, you mean,"

"No, _con_sensus. We all agreed that there were a certain number of us, for we were quite sure we had all seen each other enough to simply know everyone, and that made things easier anyway." Alice did not reply, as she was turned halfway round to look at the path they had just traversed.

"Is it getting darker? The lanterns are gone."

"Oh, we must be there. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, replaced by an enfolding darkness... yes, we're nearly--" Alice had been expecting to see a large garden full of topiaries and playing cards marching about with axes and jousting poles, but stood blinking on the curb, looking out at the expansive street before her.

It would have been much like London, if London were of a quainter, more Continental nature, but the same feeling of greatness lent a brisk importance to the way people moved. The lanterns here were much larger and whiter, and so gave rise to the details—for there was much to see—and Alice stared. The line of stone-fronted shops across the thoroughfare had stacks of chimneys rising out of them, but were not pouring out the bubbling black coal of home: rather, a thin gray steam that dissipated into lighter and lighter fog. Even stranger were the shops, with a strong sense of parody about them, or at least smacking of plagiarism. "World-Famous Libertine Fabrics and Twist," read one sign oddly. "Faulkner's Letter Emporium—fresh shipment of Qs soon!" another promised.

The absurd normalcy of a real city contained within a childhood's confusion simply piled on a greater sense of profound depth to the place, Alice found. Round the gray fountain in the middle of the street came ringing a large coach box pulled by a hand in four of white-socked ponies, but with the addition of a set of pipes whistling in tune up near the driver's bench, shooting an energy she knew not but readily could see made up half the horsepower.

"External combustion engine!" cried the Hatter from behind her over the noise, pointing at it wildly. He seemed quite pleased as the thing chugged merrily past, bursting with people hanging out of the windows waving at others on the streets and singing bits of pomp and march. A couple sitting in a barouche slid past, and Alice could see a small wheel on the back pumping away for every step the horse took. As the raucous group drove on, followed by an identical public coach, he took her arm once more to cross. There was a gulping, plugging sound overhead, and the Hatter pointed to the shadowy bullet-shaped things floating effortlessly above.

"Manatees of the sky!—they're zeppelins, full of the Crown's guard. Not that much goes on here, but I imagine it gives the place a secure, official... impression. Decidedly eerie things, floating about watching us so discerningly," he said with a face. Alice found the zeppelins interesting as they swished and turned so readily, but did not object when they began walking in the opposite direction. "I had no idea there were cities here, I thought that everything was a garden maze or a little cottage," she said after the tin ring in her ears faded.

"Oh, surely you didn't think that was all there was, did you?"

"I must admit I did," said Alice, looking over her shoulder at an old crone zipping past on a bicycle, leaving a steaming trail in the street indicating her path. "Where did all these strange inventions come from?"

"The raging white-hot intensity of a thousand flaming suns," he said in perfect seriousness.

"You've already used that metaphor," she replied.

"It... applies well... to many things," said the Hatter in defense.

"I was just about to remark how nearly close to ordinary this place may have become, but I see you exceed expectations," she said, looking at him sidelong. They had passed three identical twins in stiff double-breasted coats and a young woman with a very tiny nose conveniently carrying an odiferous Moon Rat that was smacking at something pink in its tiny paws.

"I told you—you're what's changed. When you're very short, everything seems terribly large, correct?" She nodded. "But things do not grow down and down as you grow up and up. You never saw the capital because you weren't looking for it—you were looking for a way out."

"That is true," conceded Alice, "But it does not explain why the Queen's castle was where it was, or why the forest was how it was."

"You sought the Queen's palace as a girl searches for the shoes that will lead her down the right path home. It is all in how you look at things in this country that determines what you see. Your perspective changes as you grow older, and so does your idea of other things and people." This was more than true, thought Alice, remembering the tiny balding man underneath a ginormous hat, and the young man several inches taller than she, walking now abreast. Had he always been so tall, and she had simply never seen it? "That, and the royal house was backed by the mazes until the Duchess converted them into... whatever she did with them," and he gestured where they were standing at the large iron rods surrounding an estate several stone throws beyond.

The Hatter reached for a bronze hand sticking sideways out of the brick column nearby as if to shake it in greeting; he gave a hard pull back and released; there was a distant single line of chiming and the gates began a slow ease open, steam conspicuously rising near the treadlocks.

"After you," he said. Alice hesitated, her companion looking at her appraisingly with his hands in his pockets. He glanced at the great house beyond, then back at her, questioning.

"Surely you know the way better than I do."

"Ladies et cetera," he said, and motioned. Alice could do nothing but pinch back anxiety and listen to the gates whining shut after them.

The guards standing beside the outer doors did not blink or even look sidelong at the pair as they passed. The men's large Roman noses pointed outward and expressions of immense, though carefully constructed, patience, were plastered just beneath their thin eyebrows in the lamplight. Alice had perused them carefully out of interest while the Hatter exculpated their case to the doorman, and thought that there was something strange about them.

She could not put her finger on what precisely, however, and frowned through their escort inward, forgetting to wonder at the marvels of the entrance hall. It was not until they were standing in front of a tall slanted desk where another strange-nosed man was holding something out to her that she looked up. He cracked the open book in its place and slid it toward her expectantly. There were a few blurred signatures towards the top of the smooth, heavy page.

Taking the pen from an arching angle into the steady hold of her fingers, Alice signed her own name there, neat and smooth and straight from a primer. She wrote slowly and with the simple assurance that it was her identity upon the page and no one else's, and was satisfied when she stroked her last serif. The Hatter moved the pen in one hand from her and held that sleeve back with the other, looping his moniker in the India ink as well. As she watched him she realized his handwriting was far less sloppy than she could have predicted; there was a curious mixture of sharp lines and forgiving circles there within, a contrast that folded over on itself and became singular and personable for him and him alone. It served him, beyond everything else, and this small fact was surprising.

"You have a unique signature," she remarked quietly as he gave the handled nib back to the page, who doused the vellum sheets with inking sand and blew gently to dry their now smudged names, still shining a spry black. Soon they paced down a long hallway papered in thick white stripes along a red carpet with long golden spirals, past busts of pigs and tapestries of medieval pie fights that stretched far down the hall to a pair of slim high doors.

"Comes from writing specifications, which are lengthy and tedious and actually require me to _pay attention_," he spoke contempt at the last two words, inspecting his snow-white gloves and squinting. "Far too much work for what they yield, honestly I don't think they're designed for much of anything besides wasting my time, limitless though it often seems."

"I wouldn't have thought Hatters wrote much of anything past the prices or the books," said Alice gesturing at the obvious tucked into his prominent headgear. His detailed analysis moved upward to the bright orange coat cuff buttons, and the Hatter smiled briefly at his wrists.

"What, you think hat-sharpening is the only thing I've ever done? I should just as soon ask if you have always been a lady and expect a logical answer," and they moved inward to the wide square room beyond the cornflower doors.

"Ah, but you see that I would be able to exceed your expectations, for I have been a lady as long as I have been a member of the female sex. Surely you find that logical in your own way?" said Alice with a clever voice and smug smile. She was most assuredly going to mark one up for herself in the continuing battle against his swinging quips and illogical roundabouts. The Hatter nodded forward, and Alice turned before the whole effect dropped onto the floor.

They were in a black and white checkered room, where beneath a ring of official people painted on the ceiling watched them cross the room, Alice and the Hatter crossed a four-poster pedastalled on veiny marble to the gold vanity as large as three buffets and as tall as an armoire. Six mirrors threw back the entirety of the room, and Alice saw all of herselves stop a few feet hence. It was a very nice room, finely spun together in statured managability and pleasing airs—a proper chamber for a proper monarch.

But past all of this, past the sea of color and the feeling of the Hatter standing just beyond her shoulder (in a comforting way that people who are newcomers together share in the face of social adversity), there was the soft voice at the end of the hall, and when it spun delicately across the checkered tile, Alice's expression became that of her younger self, wide-eyed and cautious.

The woman was striding toward Alice with a placidity suggesting deeper knowledge of events unfolding. The Duchess was lovely, with beautifully curving eyebrows. Her watered silk gray gown was not sad or practical, but set off a whiteness in her blonde updo so that she was a statue of a goddess with an ivory ruling hand, all capability sailing on an even keel.

"We have been waiting so patiently," she was murmuring, "and at last we are here, at last." There was such an expression of serenity from beginning to end in her; the woman's pale features were round and smooth and reassuring—not at all what one would expect of a monarch among mad people. The Duchess tilted her chin to look at Alice almost wistfully, ten miles away through the mere steps separating them both. "You are as pretty as I would have thought, my dear," she said at length.

"Thank you, Your Grace," said Alice, who could not think of a better reply, and very nearly shrunk under the monarch's amusement at this, but instead curtseyed politely.

"I trust you keep a copy of _Burke's_ at home?"

"Yes, Your Grace," said Alice, who did not see the significance of this.

"In your father's study," said the Duchess. "I should imagine."

"Yes, Your Grace."

"It is proper for a young lady to know the peerage well, even if she is not a part of it herself." Her voice was low and dusky, smooth and diplomatic. "You shall do very well as a Lady here, we think."

"If I may ask," said Alice quietly as the woman moved before the mirrors to look within and back out at her, for she had apparently deemed the matter settled, "Why is it so essential that I be titled?"

"You have learned nothing? That is fitting somehow," she said, but she was looking at the Hatter. "We suppose we might grace you with an explanation," said the Duchess, and turned so that the perfect swirl of her hair repeated itself sixfold. "Names are... so personal. It is much easier to remember one's qualities than some name one has been bestowed, and there are so many characters of a... natural bent that one simply cannot call the cat George or Richard. It is hardly fitting, as the Cheshire Cat is just that, and the March Hare is that as well."

"And the people--"

"People!" said the Duchess, and turned again to look into the mirror at Alice. "The people are more than willing to be titled, as it does make them gentrified and far more interesting in their way. You shall be called Lady, for we do not know you well enough, and that is as fine a term for someone who has been here thrice yet." Alice let the ensuing silence creep out of the corners behind the large bed on the dais and folded her hands together.

"We have asked you here because you are a clever girl, one whose curiosity suits her, and because surfaced rumors grow concerning. Residents have begun disappearing—we would trust you to discover them and their reason for leaving. It is not proper for denizens of such a close place to simply leave. You will stay, then; we shall afford you an abode and you shall be quite comfortable."

"Thank you, Your Grace," said Alice, feeling a dark presence in her middle where she remembered the pale Lilies of the Valley her sister had begun to place in the hall before the sitting room.

The gray monarch gestured to the man in the orange coat who clashed so horribly with the blue bedcurtains far beyond. "Mr. Hatter, you return. We recall you once, painting testimonial pictures in our court." He did not reply, to which she smiled in what she seemed to think was a knowing smile between compatriots. "Lead her carefully into no traps but only the brightest of certainties. Do not fail us," and Alice saw in the mirror without turning her head at all that the Hatter was standing stock still, giving the Duchess the same intense stare she commanded now.

"Of course," was his muted response.

The Duchess pushed herself off the vanity surface with her palms and crossed the room to a large red door with gold handles. "Come," she said, "We will dine in court and set you _in oficias._" The doors opened into the hall beyond, and following the monarch Alice released the breath she had kept tightly.

Before them stood a cavalcade of people staring at them with the same self-important expressions and high, lined eyebrows the aristocracy apparently deemed so essential a feature. They were grouped together by color, she could plainly see, though no real system of coding seemed to encompass the entire room, and so reds struck out against green and violet was striped at crossings with yellow.

The ladies had piling confections of hair topped off with various thematic decorations as Alice had heard of the court rooms of old Versailles, but not to such an elaborate degree. Here were ladies with tiered cakes baked into their hair, ladies with cages swinging inside perfect loops of hair housing choruses of tropical birds who talked and sang and told jokes in foreign accents, and even a woman whose hair was so heavy it had developed its own gravity: tiny moons ellipsoided her as she swatted a rogue candle caught up in her orbit. Men with very straight noses, nearly parallel lines to their face, stood posed about the place with their fingers inside their bright waistcoats, looking immensely bored with the whole thing and trying desperately to ignore Alice and the Hatter as their footsteps dropped into the intolerable silence of such a huge space.

There is no feeling that compares with the tingling uncertainty of having a roomful of important and well-dressed people stare at you with blank expressions. They are unsure of who you are, or why you are there, or whether you will amuse them, and so they do not greet you with smiles and bows and pretty words. This applies to people at all levels of extroversion, but the difference between the shrinking violet and the brassy clown is their reaction to being made of a spectacle.

Fortunately for Alice, she was so curious and interested in the general assembly's appearance that she remained calm and collected—a lesser woman would have hunched her shoulders and meekly approached the gap where the crowd had divided itself remarkably well without Moses, but Alice looked back at everyone and forgot the silent promise she had made to behave as one would at St. James's. She was lucky, for while the British courts required a feeling of utmost decorum and dignity, here the rule of thumb was to make as grand an entrance as possible—very strict punishment was in order for those who did not goggle at the crowd as the crowd did goggle.

"Lady," said the Duchess, gesturing to Alice as a means of introductory remarks, "Serve her the greatest hospitality, and so let us begin." The court moved in flashing schools to sit at the piles of flowers and bowls seeming to float in midair, they did cover the tables so holistically. The Duchess sat alone on a parapet in equal splendor, watching over her beautiful courtiers as they basked in general opulence.

The platter before her held something round and covered in a shell. Looking about, Alice saw that the other diners nearby had reached the table long before she had and were already sliced into... whatever this was. She turned to see the Hatter smacking concentratedly away at it with a meat hammer; he let the thing open and steam out before applying himself with efficiency to her main course. He did not speak as the hammer hit, and hit, and hit.

"What is it?" said Alice, fanning at the steam and peering within.

"Hedgehog," he said shortly, and the young woman made a face, at least in part at his abrupt manner. "Oh, don't be silly," said the Hatter gently now, and offered her a stab of it on the fork. Alice took tiny bites before deciding it held a texture suggesting a much larger source than such a tiny—she hit the fork and pulled it away from her face only to realize she had nearly bitten into a circlet larger than a ring but smaller than a bracelet.

"What does a hedgehog want with a gold ring?" she asked, and set it on the table. The Hatter shrugged and separated the meat from the chaff on her plate, as it were. Twenty minutes later, however, she was wishing for a seat near the Duchess, as icy as the woman was. The Hatter had returned from his brusque run-in with the tiny creatures and was in full force.

Apparently thinking that colorful French phrases would delight and charm all around him, he had already used one particularly insulting combination and was grinning delightedly at the old man across the table, who seemed quite perplexed at this. She immediately turned to the thin and stringy woman sitting next to her.

"How are you finding the vichyssoise?" she began, before she realized the chair was actually being occupied by a flamingo hanging off someone else's hat. The large bird glared at her silently, extending its neck to achieve the full vultureous effect, and she wondered perhaps if it was a cousin of her old croquet mallet. She never did seem to get along with the poor creatures, and this one was no exception until its owner produced a yo-yo as a means of well-received distraction.

The Hatter was toasting someone far down the other end of the table in lurid detail of how large and hairy their—well. Alice sighed in disgust, but not before he swung a dish covered in pink frothy bubbles under her nose and leaned in closely as if to tell her a secret low in her ears. "_Quel cul tu as,"_ was all he managed to get out before she nearly inhaled her entire glass of wine and spent the next minute and a half coughing.

"_Veux-tu m'épouser?_" he said, with no apparent idea as to its meaning, for he said it in a chiding tone of voice, for she had turned the tablecloth quite pink. Alice set down her fork too loudly and stared at him witheringly for a full ten seconds.

"You do realize that I can understand everything coming out of your mouth, don't you?" she finally replied archingly. "I should not consider myself a properly educated young lady if I did not know at least some French," this in reply to the fact that he was chuckling into a large trifle.

"Then you should continue the speech," he said, and waved a spoon at her.

"I wouldn't dream of being so unmannered as to carry on conversation in a different language than what is common at the table."

"That is your curse, then. You know French for the sake of being educated and not for the sake of simply _knowing—_you should know something just to know, yes?" The elderly pair on his right side nodded emphatically and promptly returned to their snoozing. The Hatter stuck out his lower lip at the notably speechless Alice. "Come, let us be friends: I need a shoulder to cry on after being rejected so soundly, and I _am_ your faithful guide by order of the Crown."

This was how Alice found herself befuddled at a palace banquet, surrounded by the landed gentry of Wonderland, with the Hatter's chin on her shoulder, his hat nearly covering the both of them like an umbrella, while he tried to convince her to stick his fork into the trifle, the emphasis being on the part where she would transfer it to his mouth.


	5. Chapter 5

Alice's story from Chapter 3 is the plot of the Puccini opera _Turandot_, which had a very famous aria called "Nessun dorma" that Luciano Pavarotti made incredibly famous. It's a beautiful song and even if you don't like opera it's very enjoyable.

A true thanks to those of you who review, it makes for good motivation. Rain and Brianna get credit for being rad.

* * *

Sometimes when we sleep we believe the most absurd things happen. What we usually are relieved to find, however, is that when we awaken we have not been enslaved by large spiders, or that we are not somehow deeply in debt owing to a bad bet at the roulette table, or even that we suddenly decided to free ourselves of the societal and physical restraints of clothing and have bared all to anyone who cares to look. Sometimes, less usually, we are not so relieved, even crestfallen or disappointed. Perhaps we dreamt we won the lottery, or found true love, or crowned ourselves leader of the immediate surrounding area. 

It was with less relief than she would have liked that Alice found herself staring at the ceiling of a spare bedroom in the March Hare's cottage the next morning. It was a nice ceiling, to be sure, something of a shade fair between goldsheaf and chartreuse, but a cheerful one in the morning light and it was an immediate object to focus on. Alice's mind, however, was teeming like fishing converging on a small handful of feed tossed idly into a calm pond—bubbling and boiling and thinking hard thoughts that only women can conjure at such an hour.

She was concentrating very hard trying to remember how she had gotten to the precise location where she was now. There was confusion surrounding last night's activities owing to the bizarre nature of the banquet, and Alice wondered (with a squint) if perhaps she hadn't simply dreamt everything. It seemed plausible, but awfully convenient. She would have much rather awoken in her own bedroom, or even a bedroom inside the castle, but it was quite clear to her that these quarters were of a distinctly Leporidian taste. But the real question was how she was there, and to that she had no immediate answer.

There was no point of sitting in this bedroom with no answers to any of life's more presently challenging questions, and so Alice rose and went to the wardrobe in the corner hoping to find her dress from the night before to assess whether it would be presentable. She opened the door and found to her surprise not only her own frock, but a new frock every time she shut and opened the armoir door. She closed her eyes, picked the lavender silk one at random, and then Alice put her smashed curls into a vaguely Grecian updo and went to the door.

At the end of the moderately sized hallway was the mahogany door to the strange library she had seen the afternoon before, but it was closed at present. Passing through the house, Alice called for the March Hare but found no one within. She glanced over her shoulder again at the darkly colored door from her standpoint in the dining room. It was there, and perhaps her host was within and could not hear her. In addition, her stomach was beginning to complain and she did not want to impose herself on someone else's kitchen. Alice knocked softly and turned the handle to enter, willing down the dread thrills in her stomach.

The library resembled her father's, and the lifted ceilings were something of a shock to her from being in the low and narrow rooms of the rest of the house. The tall lead-paned windows on the opposite wall were covered with velvet drapes, with bolts of pushy sunlight striking through, and a sticky, stifling warmth permeated the dust on the furniture. It was the unmistakable air of something starkly different from the rest of the house that really struck her, however, and Alice began in earnest to inspect the empty room carefully.

Books, of course, on many subjects foreign to her, such as _Whippetson On Care of the Bealzestock, Poke Sallet Toxicity_, and even _Aphids of the Greater Wonderland,_ sat in neat rows upon rows along the dark shelves. There was a whole row of books on politics as well. On the far wall from the bookshelves hung several lithographs of various city maps, but what caught Alice's eye was the unusually realistic image of a large group of people and creatures she recognized as a daguerreotype. In the middle, just above the words "Privy Court of the Late Season," sat a dark-haired moody woman scowling while everyone around her sat with tense blank stares, waiting for the slow exposure time. She was startled—here was the old Queen of Hearts, and tempestuous she did look indeed.

Next to that was a newer picture, unframed but tacked directly upon the wall: this time of the Duchess and her six named princesses, but no one else. Alice glanced back at the older image; there had been far more official courtiers under the old tyrannical monarch, but the new ruler apparently chose to surround herself with an elite few. She looked carefully at each of the beautiful women. Their faces did not betray the hint of fear on those who were sitting near the Queen of Hearts in the other picture; instead, they seemed quite content. Smug, perhaps. The Duchess herself was the kingpin of calm in her seated throne as the women stood about her in various graceful looks and glances. Alice had the feeling that the royal's eyes would follow her if she moved, and quickly looked over to one of the maps nearby.

It took her a moment or two to comprehend what she was inspecting because it lacked a map key and title, but Alice soon realized she was looking at the capital city. There was definitely an oval tract of land to the east that hinted at a large palace and grounds beyond. In the west was the edge of the forest, and she could see a bit of a lake or perhaps a river in the north. Prominently displayed, however, were the intricately scribed and recorded buildings in the city. Alice looked carefully and found all manner of proper businesses, greengrocers, government buildings, and the town square. Here was the jail with a panopticon in the top, here was the docking station for the military zeppelins. Just south of the library was an old museum of history which was marked "closed" in a handwriting different from the mapmaker's. There was even, and Alice smiled at this, just south of the letter-writing shop, a haberdashery.

"My dear?" said a quiet voice from the door, and Alice turned to find the March Hare looking quizzically at her, barely peeking through the door.

"Oh, I am sorry, I didn't mean to intrude, I was only curious and--" She stopped speaking and twisted her hands together awkwardly.

"No, it is altogether fine," said the Hare, not entering the room. "But come, you must have some breakfast. Leave these old books and things be, boring old things." Alice did not think so at all—rather, she would have loved to pore over every detail, albeit perhaps in one of the more welcoming rooms, but did not say as much and followed the Hare out into the garden and to the large larderboard table. It was laden down as usual with every good thing a baker could be proud of, and at its end, with his large green spat-clad feet propped onto it, sat the Mad Hatter. Or rather she could guess—he had a large newspaper before him. _Local Flute-player Harvests Record Number of Preserved Habaneros_, said the headline. Alice furrowed her brow at this.

"Good morning," she ventured, and seated herself. The newspaper shifted and rattled together, and Alice heard a slight bumble from beyond. The March Hare shrugged before standing on the table to reach for a blue pot of jam. It seemed to be a pleasant enough morning, Alice thought, and here was plenty of food, at least. She was ever so slightly hesitant to simply help herself, given her host's preceding track record in hospitality, but neither party before her gave any protestation at her presence. She busied herself with a pink checked pot which had a knitted cover shaped like a cat before pressing for conversation. The intent was to squeeze for information, but really Alice was unsure of what route to take—she did not want to start a fight on such a fine morning when she so badly needed someone to tell her what she was looking for. Alice pushed back the image of the green gate in the forest and bravely sipped her tea.

"What an odd dinner party the Duchess threw last night." The Hatter did not reply to this in the slightest, but the Hare seemed willing to indulge her in conversation.

"Did she? She throws far stranger fetes than the old Queen did, I have heard it told."

"Do you not go in to court often, then?"

"Oh, no, I am hardly welcome there."

"May I ask why not?"

"Certainly," he replied brightly. Alice stumbled at this, but caught herself accordingly.

"Why are you not welcome at court?" The Hare folded his paws together and looked back up at his cottage carefully and did not speak for a time.

"I suppose... it is because... it is her preference." Alice set down her muffin and pursed her lips with frustration at the Hare, who did not notice.

"She does not seem to care for a large group of followers anyway," she said in the same continuing line of questioning.

"The Duchess is a vastly private lady. She moves in mysterious ways her wonders to perform, if you can call them that. Maybe she enjoys the illusion of mystery—those creatures she keeps around would make an excellent team for a Canasta set."

"She ordered me to do something," said Alice with a clever thought, casually adding another drop of cream to her tea. "Something about those missing residents you mentioned earlier." If ever there was a convenient time for the March Hare to indeed be an actual talking hare, it was now, for his large ears flipped upward before he checked them stiltingly, and they came down with much reluctance. Alice took careful note and continued casually. "Apparently it is serious enough to concern her."

"Did she mention anything else?" One of his ears jerked into a crease and quivered while he managed to keep his face barely stonelocked.

"Merely that she expects me to come to circumstances with the cause—and why she would choose me is quite beyond my understanding--"

"Need I remind you, my dear, that you are something of a legend," said the Hare, his curiously coded tone disappearing as he experimented with a mixture of jam and the lavender growing out of a vase in the middle of the table. "People come here quite often, you must know, and after one visit I think they find the place sufficiently beyond their narrow comprehension and use their return ticket home as fast as they can. You, on the other hand, border on insistence at your own presence. You are, in short," and he smacked his lips with satisfaction at the completion of his blend, "An anomaly at large."

"How does that give me any advantage? You haven't changed your attitude toward me, I think it would be just as difficult for me to go about asking question as anybody: you're still likely to give a strange answer."

"Unlike other people who wander through to Wonderland, you are far more willing to work to reconcile the logical fallacies you perceive," he said smiling and relishing his tea. The crumpet with the lavender jam had been reduced to a pile of crumbs. "Most visitors say, 'Dash it all, this really is too much, you know!' and bung back through the rabbit hole on to... wherever it is you go when you are not here. That other thing."

"I suppose that does rather set me apart," she said thoughtfully.

"Only you could find it strange, my dear. It is quite in your favor."

"What could possibly be such an issue?" Here the Hare frowned more deeply than ever.

"I think they are far too concerned with the recent consensus. You know, I imagine they counted far fewer courtiers this year than in previous--"

"I mean with the creatures who have vanished."

"Ohh, you must understand. Like a--" he pointed to himself "--out of a--" and then pointed to the newspaper, next to which Alice could just see the brimband of a large hat poking out, "--only backways, you see."

"Just like that?"

"_In absentia_, and apparently not gone to the old family caravan by the sea. One day someone went 'round to the Caterpillar's leaf, and he was gone."

"But that is not unusual—he left me once in the middle of a conversation."

"Left his hookah and a good supply of ma'sal—I wouldn't be leaving my best collection of jam pots if I weren't deserting. And lots more besides."

"Who else is missing?" The Hare ticked them off on his paws.

"The oysters out of the bay--"

"I thought the Walrus and the Carpenter ate them all."

"They're gone as well."

"Perhaps to another bed of seafood?"

"Half the Heart army--"

"Following their Queen, no doubt, they are worthless without her."

"Who else, the Lion and the Unicorn..."

"That is no mystery," said Alice, "They are off fighting. Or in peace together. Whichever they have decided on recently." The Hare turned to frown at her.

"You certainly take these disappearances lightly."

"But these are all things one would expect of these creatures. It is in their personal nature, it only seems reasonable for them."

"Reason?" The Hare said this with a horrified inflection bordering on offense.

"Of course, in this country, unreason seems to be more popular," said Alice, backpedalling lightly, feeling as though she had taken a wrong turn from the jam-lined sunny promenade of companionship down a dark alley of argument and misunderstanding. To be fair, fights do have a tendency to come out of nowhere sometimes, and Alice was no stranger to the way people's feelings can sometimes overtake their ability to properly interpret the conversation.

"Popularity is nothing but ephemeral speculation and vague subjectivity," said the Hare. "And besides, it is not within reasonable grounds for these disappearances—not unless invisible ink had gotten into the waterworks." He paused to frown into his cup of tea with a mild concern. There was a pause, and Alice watched lines shaped like birds flap their way toward the city in the sky above. "Besides, we only dream of what you call Reason, and would have nothing more to do with it than that. Barmy stuff." The irritation, Alice was glad to see, had gone out of his person and she was left with a hare who hardly knew what they had talked of but the last sentence out of his mouth.

"You dream of normal things?"

"Oh no, they are quite strange indeed. Terrifyingly suspect, the sort of thing one dreads. You might call them normal. Whatever it is that normal is."

"I never have normal dreams."

"That is up to opinion and silly interpretation."

"I should say so, I spent half the night dreaming I was there at the palace again, only with more dancing elephants and a large exercising pool in the ceiling." The Hare shook his head at this while turning his cup as though to read the possibly poisoned leaves within.

"Never ceases to amaze, this tendency of yours to label this 'strange' or that 'normal'. I shall tell you of a strange dream, or rather nightmare, I think, that I had recently. I was in a large meadow with many of my relatives and compatriots, only the whole business was conducted on our hind legs and with a far deal greater fear that something was going to swoop in and eat—either us, or the grass in the fields, I honestly cannot recall. Either way it would not have made a good meal—grass is terribly bland. Indeed, I nearly woke in a cold sweat after such an ordeal. I can't say I know why the deuce we were going about quite nude, either. Perhaps it tells of last night's supper." Alice graciously overlooked the Hare's labels of 'this and that' and took this in with a nod.

"It means you will come into a good fortune soon," said the voice behind the newspaper. Alice looked in the Hatter's direction.

"Have you decided to have some breakfast, Mr. Hatter? It is such a lovely morning, you should put the paper aside and join us."

"Is it?!" he said in pure astonishment, rattling the newspaper furiously. "I should say not, I had a blasphemous headache only the Furies would applaud," and with a loud papery snap, propped the rag between several smoking teapots to read with his elbows on the table, looking at them for the first time. Alice nearly spoke again before she saw what she was confronted with at a breakfast table. The hatless Hatter was leaning forward to stare at them intently, a sleek wooden pipe elegantly curving out of the side of his mouth. Forming slowly in the bowl were soap bubbles, glinting purple and blue in the sunlight before they roiled up and floated away into the trees.

"Why are there soap bubbles coming out of your pipe?" The words came before she could reflect on what absurdities they would produce.

"_Ceci n'est pas une pipe_," said the Hatter with a shrug.

"Yes it is, I can see that it is."

"Not if I say it isn't—now what say you?" he said, and pulled it from his mouth to point it at her dramatically.

"Good on you, old boy, leaving the monocle aside. It really would have lessened the effect," said the Hare, breaking in on Alice's continued protestations. The white-haired man popped the pipe back between his teeth and flicked the side in an apparent attempt to prime the good stuff.

"You think so?" said the Hatter, turning so they could see his profile with the pipe. "Rather dashing, what?"

"Mmm, yes," said the Hare with another mouthful of cake, "Now you need a burnished pointy stick, yes?"

"A burnished pointy stick would be _ludicrously perfect at this point!_" cried the Hatter in joyful declaration.

"A headache, you say?" said Alice finally. "I awoke quite refreshed and found Mr. Hare's library interesting to peruse." The pipe reached a brief but violent boiling point and a large cloud of perfect spheres floated away before the Hatter spoke again.

"You found the library, did you? Quite fascinating, is it not?" he gave a pointed look to the Hare, who sat quiescent staring into his teacup as though something poisonous were about to crawl out and pinch his nose.

"It is a boring and equivocally disturbing and I wish it weren't there—much rather have a hot house in that part of the lot," he replied with a sigh.

"I didn't think it was--" Alice did not finish her sentence, for the sequence of events that followed swept past her rather abruptly. The Hatter stood, grabbed his hat out of thin air, knocked the soap out of his pipe in one great _clack_ against his armrest, came round the table's corner, pulled her out of her chair, and had her halfway to the gate by the arm extended before she could berate the Hatter for nearly smashing two stacked pots of tea onto her dress.

"Let's go see where they're putting you up, shall we? I hear it's a nice house, in a _manor_ of speaking!" He split forward laughing, and Alice turned to see the Hare, still at the table, one paw round his cup, waving his fingers at her with a vague and sunny smile as the gate knocked shut behind her.

It was a good dozen paces or so along the bricking until Alice finally jerked her hand out of her companion's, rubbing her shoulder where he had been keen to dislocate her limbs.

"Are you dragging me out of there to avoid talking about the Hare's library? You're only making me wonder what's going on in there," she said, thoroughly irked. He sighed and adjusted his white gloves.

"That room," he said, and his tone surprised her, for he was bordering on the precipice of seriousness, "Is nothing but barmy old books and maps that are past their last wheezing breath of usefulness. It came with the house and he's never had the sense to seal the blasted thing off. He wants a hothouse, but I think he should install a conservatory."

"Those are the same thing--"

"Conservatory sounds far more sophisticated, it is all in how you interpret it.

"--why don't you like it? Books and maps aren't anything but useful."

"If you enjoy sitting in a stifling dusty room squinting until your eyes go all strabismus." Alice rolled her eyes and the Hatter gave her a sly sidelong smile.

"There, you see? I suspect you have it from too much time staring at words. And you wouldn't be enjoying anything out of doors with one eye here and the other eye there." He made the attempt at a wall-eyed look, but winced painfully.

"I didn't plan for a morning constitutional, this isn't an ambling gown, you know."

"You're right, it remains lacking in sentient walking abilities. We're only off to see a house, you know."

"Speaking of houses," she tacked in a tactful way, "Do you know where I'm supposed to be staying?"

"No," came the swinging, blithe answer.

"Then how do you know where we're going?"

"I suppose I shall know when we get there."

"How?"

"It will be the last place we look." She was struck momentarily by the absurdity of it all, but Alice could vaguely detect some semblance of actual reality there, muddled though it was, and let herself be led along. There was something else Alice had been meaning to ask, something that had barely pressed itself against the back of her mind since that morning, something that she--

"Why does everyone need a title here? Is that a newer policy under your newer monarch?"

"Number one I imagine it is because we've always had titles, number two I thought not—weren't you Kinged the last time you were here?"

"No, I was a queen." This lent her some time to reflect. "Then why am I being demoted?"

"I rather doubt it being the same," said the Hatter, squinting his nose and trying to decide which fork in the road they would take. "I think you were Queen Alice before, and now you're just a Lady. Left or right? I think left, but perhaps that's what they _want me to think..._" Alice paused to turn round.

"Do you hear something?"

"... eldritch larks, I know they're after the hat; it would complete their plans in a trap..."

"Are you listening to me?"

"... possibly not..." The Hatter held a fistful of dirt and grass up to his eye, preparing to scope out the deceitful iota loathe to make his life easier.

"Or possibly I should just leave you here and go back to the house. I thought the Hare mentioned clotted cream earlier and I never did have a scone," said Alice, looking back along where they had come. From her companion came a noncommittal mumble. "What did you say?"

"I didn't say anything."

"I thought I—there it is again. Truly, do you hear that?"

"Hear what." Alice pulled at his sleeve slowly at first and more insistently as the soft gorging burzing sound rose from a deep undetectable bass into a low register that was barely audible. The Hatter frowned and stood upright from his bent over inspection of the ground.

They listened together at the white and purple sliced birch trees silently peeling in the darkness of the shade just beyond. The forest seemed to grow about them very tightly, expanding and claiming something from the pair. And then Alice distinctly heard it. The distant buzzing noise as before, a bee hive mixed with an approaching bubbling that steered upward into a grind, a noise that spelled danger in her stomach and kicked up dust from a long distance yet. There was a shudder among the mass of undifferentiated leaves above, and together they took a step backward, Alice with her hands out as if to work the noise into submission. A tree fell, followed by the sucking, cracking sound of others upon others while the ground resisted and conducted the buzzing to beneath their feet until they felt and heard and saw the effects but nothing besides.

"Oh_crumbs_," said the Hatter, his eyes growing wide. He turned fully to her, and looking once more over their shoulders toward the searing hot noise and great Something that was pulling down the trees with it as it walled them, Alice felt a numbness growing up from her feet to the tingling fire in her stomach. "How do you feel about running?" he said, and without a pause but great force Alice felt a jerk forward and they moved, suddenly and completely forward, sprinting through the forest, abandoning the path altogether.

Rushing right at them through the sylvan spaces, the trees appeared to move back and forth crossing the narrow spaces. Whether the intent was to stop them or to impede the hissing grinding stomping mass behind them was unclear, but as the Hatter strafed his way past mossy rock, the aerodynamics of the thing lessened by hat and skirts and hoops and very large feet, but resolute above all.

The Hatter did not stop the great lopes his legs could drag them both until they had run at full speed straight between a tall hedgerow and come out in an open space, and even as they both collapsed against a bush he did not let go of her arm. There was silence now under the bluest of blue sky, and no trees but for the other side of where they sat, couched in grass and twigs. Alice closed her eyes, shuddering and heaving and tried to think if she had seen something she could now recall; the forest had been a sharp whistle in her ear and the dire sound cut a swathful rampage. But she had no memory beyond the trees capsizing and the Hatter's face turning before black trees sliced together at angles.

"Bit late for morning calisthenics, I think," the Hatter said, and removed his hand from where it had been digging into the brim of his hat. He was becoming microscopically more useful than five minutes ago, as Alice reflected that he_ was_ awfully good at running. _Abandon him altogether, wouldn't that have been a fine idea and then winding up in the belly of something that noxious. _She was winded in an icy biting way, both from being dragged through the forest and from sitting on the ground in a corset—it was a rather uncomfortable situation, but better discomfort than being lost in the woods or devoured by some swinging mysteriousness that was out there. There was an awkward silence in which they listened to each other gasping and rustling the leaves to find a comfortable situation before Alice threw her hands up in the air and began in exasperation,

"Is that normal, then? To be chased about the countryside by dangerous monsters, running in terror for your life?"

"I can't say I've ever really--"

"Or do you take your tree lifts to avoid the paths? What is wrong with this place? I don't mean that in the usual sense, either, this business of everyone around here being as resolutely and firmly strange as they can manage, but don't you think, _don't you think_ it's all rather odd to be hunted down while on a simple walk? Surely you agree that it is at least slightly normal to be able to go about your daily business without being mangled to pieces by some gnashing abomination?"

"Well--"

"You have no inclination to give me an answer, I think." And here she folded her arms and felt very cross indeed. She was not angry with the Hatter, but what had come out of her mouth felt very satisfying to say when what scant information she had been given so far had led Alice around in circles and deeper confusion. It was only natural that things should turn out this way, she thought, given she was foolish enough to come running straight into a thoroughly mucky business. When the Hatter spoke, it was with a kind diplomatic incline.

"First of all, there are no 'tree lifts'--I've never heard of anything so improbable. Those jokers work by a system of rotational and lateral physics, but that's awfully rummy to explain and not the point. No, I've never been chased through anything, least of all a forest, and I have to say that was about as much huffing and puffing as I care to do for another hundred years. In fact, I think I may have damaged some internal thingy related to a good lie-down..." He paused, and Alice listened to the quiet that pervaded the space over her shoulder. "Would you like some advice?"

"From you?" The Hatter looked around.

"Who else would give you advice at a time like this?"

"Never mind, what did you want to say?"

"Do keep half a mind to circumstances, if I may say so. Getting all gluey in the details won't help your plan for discovery. Remember where you are. It's all swings and roundabouts after that." Alice looked ahead for a few moments and then she turned her head to look right at him.

"Could you lend a hand in all of this? Usefully, I mean? I know it's orders, but I shouldn't care for you to be burdened with anything." The Hatter did not respond but gave a faint half-smile and looked out over the sunny lawn before them, sighing instead. It was a few moments before he became preoccupied with rifling through his own expansive coat pockets.

"The soul cries out under duress—I think I have a restorative elixir here somewhere--"

"I hope you mean tea and not anything else. Bombay reserve in your coat pocket and half a snifter of brandy in your shoe, wouldn't that be--" The Hatter hesitated by a breadth of a second and Alice gave a breathy scoff. "Oh, this _is_ absurd—how on earth do you keep everything in those pockets?"

"Pleating seams go an awfully long way when you've got the determination for big pockets," he said with several pauses for breath, and passed her a cup of tea with a lemon round on the brim. He uttered a quiet cheers and sipped. Alice drank deeply and felt warmly restored—she had forgotten how much she had missed the light sharpness of lemon on her tongue. This was only Ceylon, but it reminded her of afternoons spent in a window seat listening to her prim oldest sister read aloud from _Pilgrim's Progress_ or some other exacting tome. Her sisters were probably talking of velvet and what sort of flowers to put in the bridal bouquet, splashing about in their bathing dresses and building a castle of sand in the air towers of the open beaches. She wondered what color dress the bridesmaids would wear, and realized she was actually caring about something she had so longed to forget. There was some residual feeling of nostalgia or sadness, but Alice set the cup back into the saucer.

"I think you are obliged to tell me if you know something specific. The Hare was far more forthcoming with details than you've been. That monster—was it what I thought it was? A Jabberwock I should--" He jerked his head around and simultaneously hissed and choked, sloshing tea on the grass. Alice swept her train out of the way and folded her hands in patience.

"Don't—summon--dangerous--arck--"

"You should have told me if you knew." She cast a wary eye onto him. "That isn't what that was, was it?"

"That was whatever that was, that was," he recovered in a significant tone, to which Alice replied with a sardonic look and pursed lips.

"I don't suppose you would care to tell me how lost we are? Or do you not know?" Mr. Hatter reached for a branch in the hedge behind them and began to pull himself up and forward, dusting off his orange morning coat and casting a look about. "And don't tell me 'we are whereever we are,' I know we're i someplace /i , but everyplace has a name and I suspect we are in a place known as 'someone's back garden that does not allow for trespassers'."

"No no no, look:" he said, and she followed his arm to where he pointed. There was the cottage, the front door, the post box about, and three ladders curiously poking into different pieces of the thatched roof. The man in the hat and the girl in the skirts exchanged a look and pulled forward. The large green lizard in suspenders met them at the front walk.

"Whose place is this?" said the Hatter with a wrinkle of the nose, for it was in much disrepair and need of some ample construction. "And who did they leave it to in a will—run fast and far from this one."

"'S'one's a deserter," replied the lizard, unconsciously flicking his tongue. "S'empty, like. Fin' it up for the guest of the Crown, I imagine. Hoy!" he shouted, and Alice jumped, "Git th' crete ou' here!" A lumbering mass of something like a bored bear came snorting from around the corner with a large wooden barrel that puffed and dusted up grey when he let it _thunk_ onto the ground.

"Oh! then it must be for me," said Alice, coughing politely as she could, "The Duchess told me I should have someplace to stay." Lizard foreman stared at her without changing expressions.

"Zat right." The Hatter had wandered off to look inside the post box as though he expected to find something of greater interest.

"May I ask—who lived here before?" she queried, "It does look as though someone has moved out."

"Naw, 'e's gone an' left everything."

"The house is still set with furniture?"

"E'el set it up new-like, right, y'can't keep it if it in' yours."

"Well, whose is it?"

"The White Rabbit moved out?" said the Hatter from directly beyond her elbow. He was standing with his head cocked at a curious angle and a strange sort of concern squaring off at the blue in his eyes.

"Left all a sudden, I hear'," mumbled the bear as it shuffled back around the corner.


	6. Chapter 6

I wish I were as brilliant as the people who all conspired to come up with such good characters.

The excerpt is from the second best opera ever. I guess the Hatter has had some musical training? This aria requires some mad skill. So I gave him some. Whatever—the man is ace of aces, he can handle it.

* * *

_I like this place, and willingly could waste time in it._

**Shakespeare**

There was very little to give Alice reason for counting the days—days spent crossed between sunny repose and quiet revelation on the sheer volume of life's subtleties she had not had the capacity to pick apart as a child in the Wonderland. One could spend the whole day watching dragonflies skim along the reeds in a garden before realizing that they were holding court. The rewards of paying attention to the smallest details only came to her when she didn't realize that she was being observant, and this kept our heroine quite occupied. Thankfully it was an easy affair, keeping house where she did, for everything was sent by delivery and she had want of nothing besides diverting company and excellent conversation. These, of course, came in half-shares and confusing roundabouts, but she was pleased nonetheless to have gone for some time without conflict in the eyes of her two solitary companions.

For while it was true that she had been to many an impromptu party (sometimes manifesting out of the blue in her own front yard without her knowledge) and met many interesting and terribly fashionable people, Alice remained in the strictest confidences of Hatter and Hare, esquires. She had managed to secure the Hatter's promise that indeed he would help her where he could beyond the orders of the Duchess, but he seemed so strangely disquieted by making binding promises that she had decided not to mention the subject except in future situations of calamity, which had thankfully not yet arisen.

She was putting the finishing touches on a straw bonnet that she felt made her look like an admiral's wife in preparation for the afternoon tea she took precisely at the same time every day on the Hare's lawn. It was a quiet and easy walk she did not mind at all, though the Hatter had instructed her more than once on how the strange tree portals worked—she ought to _use _them, he felt, if they were there, how else were they to remember their explicit purpose as portals? But Alice remained unmoved by his inexplicable protestations and enjoyed the way the trees lifted their branches away from her, as if they too enjoyed her artistic presence more than their own scientific purpose.

It was not until she had gotten more than a few hundred yards from the tiny picket gate that Alice heard singing and laughter, a sure sign that the tea party was going to be the afternoon's entertainment for more than one group of aristocrats. They came in waves, these beautiful people with their pointed features and thin brows, and whenever Alice turned around, she never found herself facing the same person she had been speaking to only a moment before.

As it were, the Hatter and Hare were quite the dazzling hosts, that is, according to their guests. Where Alice had vaguely suspected that the two were outsiders or social pariahs somehow, her theory had been proven wrong when it was revealed to her on a Thursday afternoon that the Hatter possessed the desirable and apparently rare talent of designing hairstyles in addition to his skills of the hat, and doing so well enough that it was nearly impossible to enter the kitchen for the amount of people standing about waiting for the white-haired man with a large pair of steel shears. So it was again today, Alice found, smiling benevolently as she pushed her way with some force past a group of women wearing unseasonably large bonnets, and managed to find the Hatter in the midst of what could easily have been open bell on the trading floor at the London Exchange. In the din of gossip, several young gentlemen were apparently trying to catch the interim barber's attention by gesturing with strange handsigns in the same way that stockmen at an auction would. The Hatter, however, did not appear to be paying attention to them.

He was in the midst of an richly toned aria, his sleeves rolled up, and standing on a ladder above someone with long dark hair, which he had pulled straight up several feet, inspecting carefully as he trimmed microscopic amounts off the ends.

"_Tutti mi chiedono, tutti mi vogliono, donne, ragazzi, vecchi, fanciulle: Qua la parrucca! Presto la barba! Qua la sanguigna! Presto il biglietto--_" he orated with a hand uplifted to the ceiling, when by and by a young man by the sink suddenly began shouting out some reproach Alice didn't quite catch. The effect, however, was immediate. The Hatter flung the scissors at the man's head, missing him by a healthy six feet and instead lodging the shears with a loud _TWANG_ into a cupboard door nearby. The Hatter draped an arm over his brow dramatically before bellowing over the entire chattering contents of the kitchen.

"I shall not cut hair for a hundred years—nay, a _thousand millenia forthwith_! An artist can only be commissioned so many times before he collapses from exhaustion! You're going to give me ulceritis of the palms, you slave drivers all, I've half a mind to nearly cut off my good scissoring hand—_I am not in jest this time, Countess, mark my words!_" this thundered to a woman with large watery eyes and a charming pout who exclaimed that he was out to ruin the entire court if he did not bestow such a beloved gift upon those in need. There was a general uproar at his words, but it carried the air of those who have heard the protestations before and consider themselves so well-versed in the joke that they are inclined toward over-expressed outrage that is ultimately amusing and meaningless.

As if he had never spoken, the Hatter produced another pair of scissors and bent to consult with the strapping lady in a crisp white muslin gown sitting on the low stool in front of him, who had decided she wanted her black hair to be curls in a Rococo style. Somehow he seemed to have managed it without the clay rollers and lemon juice that she herself had always found necessary, Alice saw, and began to move in a backdoor-therly direction with the promise of victuals, passing only two young gentlemen who were in the process of synchronizing their pocket watches but arguing where the second hand officially lay. Outside, she breathed in once more, glad to be far from the maddening crowd.

Here there was relative peace, with only a bewigged squire snoring in a half-eaten treacle while two old ladies sat too close together in a mistaken attempt to see with the other's lorgnette, politely not mentioning how confused they both were. Alice reached for the pots of jam and clotted cream before they sprouted legs and took off down the table. She had seen one too many ruined tablecloths to know which ones were quicker on the uptake and which were drowsy in the afternoon sunlight. Laying the cream thickly over a scone, she supped deeply on tea and sat watching the sun come through the trees along the hedge until a loud_ POP WHOOSH_ came from the house. The two ladies dropped the spectacles, and as they rooted around underfoot hoping to find the proper pair, the squire bolted up with a loud snort.

"Eh?!" he exclaimed through the treacle on his face. "Er, cajun spice sweats and blushers your mind," he said to no one, and fell with a _splorch_ back into the pudding. Alice rose and ambled to the kitchen door to see what dramatic antics had lately befallen the guests, who, she thought, were sure to see anything exciting and loud as an open invitation to return every day for the rest of the week. Boring parties only led to more boring parties, so the only real reason for parties was bragging rights in case something became topping good, someone had told her at another of these gatherings.

Peering through a window edged with angelica and parsley, she could see what looked like a cloud of magnified individual dust strands slowly rolling outward from the general direction of the Hatter, and the mass of gentry now attempting to leave as one found themselves hung up at the door on various obstacles, not the least of which were both the doorjamb and some unwisely chosen panniers on a lady whose parrot was flying in circles around her head, squawking out derisive insults she had no doubt trained it to speak. The frame heaved, squeaked, and expanded impossibly, and suddenly thirty gasping and coughing aristocrats were indignantly making their way across the lawn, exclaiming to one another in genuine outrage that this was, quite frankly, not where the party was to remain for the week.  
"Simply unacceptable, and definitely not the dernier crie of excellence," was the general opinion.

"See you in a fortnight!" cried the Hare cheerfully from the window sash he had opened to let the strange, slowly floating pieces of black soot depart. "My dear!" he said on spying Alice, "Do come in, this will all settle soon enough!"

"What on earth happened?" asked Alice, waving a hand before her to clear away several bug-shaped blotches of ash.

"Hatter thought perhaps some curlers were in order after all, but he stuck a set of sealing wax sticks in the fire instead. Now it's nothing but a melty lump of wax, not to mention the party's off for now. Rotten luck, but more food for us in the end, eh?"

It was a good hour and a half before the entire debacle had settled like the soot itself to the creaky wooden floorboards of the Hare's cottage, for the aristocrats stood about in various poses on the lawn attempting to loudly justify to one another their reasons for attending such a _passe_ affair. He did not seem to pay much mind, and was actually more interested in pulling the large pair of scissors out of the cupboard door than he was with the loss of three boxes of brand new sealing wax. The Hatter wrinkled his nose and watched the haunched rabbit press his oversized feet into the cabinet door to pull on the handles. It was only when he flew backward into a wall, giving rise to another wall of soot, and declared himself "kite quonqussed" that the Hatter was disturbingly content to leave his friend behind.

"Well, I must say, all in all a terribly productive afternoon I've passed," he said amiably as he fiddled with his rolled-up shirtsleeves and grabbed a passing scone on their way to the gate.

"You scared off half the county's gentry, exploded your best friend's kitchen fireplace, and watched him practically smash his head open," said Alice mock-helpfully, holding up her fingers to count.

"Well," drawled the Hatter through an indulgent bite of cream, "I do enjoy _splitting hares_, you know," elbowing her in the ribs and _haw haw haw_ing.

"Oh, stop, that's awful," she groaned.

"You don't like my puns? They're delicious—much like this piece of bakery. I think this is pineapple, actually." He broke off a piece for Alice to taste. It was, and she smiled and nodded in reply. They walked along the paths in silence for a long time before turning their steps into a familiar incline deep and upward into a place where the branches sloped and the pale greenish sunlight was foggy through their star-shaped leaves.

On a clear day, Alice could see forever; forever in her case being past the edge of the forest's border, beyond which lay the rest of the kingdom, which was visible by how the treeline suddenly fell into tan desert and low scrubland. From the top of her favorite outcropping above a small private clearing, she watched flocks of birds rise up out of the trees and fall in beautiful layered clouds back into their shaded bowers. The Hatter sat on a gray boulder nearby and leaned back on his elbows, rolling his head around and around on his shoulders. She didn't even have to look at him; she could tell by the satisfying cracking noises his neck made that this afternoon walk was just as typical as every other afternoon walk.

Alice turned and stepped up onto the boulder just behind the Hatter's fingers, shading the afternoon sun in her hands.

"What are you doing?"

"Trying to get a better look round," she said. "I say, what's that?"

"What's what?" he said, looking up at her backwards so that his mouth looked like one giant waggling eyebrow.

"That," she pointed in her clean lilac glove. He gave a dramatic heave and climbed up next to her. "There," said Alice, "that black spot in the trees on the edge of the border. I've never seen that before." The Hatter too shaded his eyes and was quiet for a moment. It wasn't so much a clearing as it was a large chunk removed, or simply gone, Alice thought. Perhaps nothing existed there. The rest of the treeline before the tan earth was better kept; crisp, even. The Hatter made a soft _hmm_ and twisted up one side of his mouth to think.

"You wouldn't want to go there," he said quietly. She waited without asking the obvious question. "It's um," he paused and looked off in the distance to find the words. "It's not a nice place. I would recommend against it," he said at last.

It was not often that the Hatter said truly strange things, but when he did, Alice made a special note of it in her head. This had begun as an experiment to try to make sense of him; failing in that, Alice tried her best to make no effort of discovery, hoping to have some revelation of his character that would not have been visible in a public eye by sheer passivity. This was very nearly impossible. The Hatter was not an open book; rather, he was much like a staircase carved into a moebius strip—she went around and around alternately trying to analyze and pretend to ignore him and still could not work out where the ends properly met and everything fell into place. What she did find usually came out of the forest and hit her smack in the forehead.

It was moments like these that made Alice wonder if the Hatter were not a little sane. It only made sense to be for the most part mad and just the teensiest bit normal, just as she suspected herself to be sane in the majority but just a smidge crazy as well. How else could she possibly insist so strictly on sticking things through in such a mixed-up world?

_"We are all mad here," _the Cheshire Cat had told her once, and before he had disappeared again he had given her some advice.

* * *

"I've been looking for hours, where could he possibly be?" Alice was shading her eyes from the noon sunlight and looking up into the trees, hoping to find a pair of ghastly yellow eyes blinking back at her.

"I don't suppose either—but then, I'm more straightforward than you are," said the Hatter. He had gotten the orange dustcoat back from the launder, who had accidentally and vigorously starched it. The Hatter apparently took some enjoyment in lurching about like a mad scientist's reanimated monster, his arms held before him at funny angles and his legs locked at the knees despite the fact that his trousers remained unstarched. This farce extended to his organic features.

"Errrrrr," said the Hatter, grimacing as though his face were frozen.

"What?" said a disinterested Alice, who had been suffering through this game for two days already and was busy shuffling through tree branches.

"Errrrrr!"

"I can't understand you, open your mouth."

"Errrrrllll."

"What?

"Errrrrlllll."

"Earl? What Earl?"

"Euugghhhllll." There was an irritated pause before Alice whipped around, her skirts twisting after her.

_"Oil?!"_ Is that what you're saying? You don't need to be oiled _you are not made of tin!"_ His fun dissolved, the Hatter gave one last mournful Errrr, sighed, and dropped his arms to his sides, where they sat stiffly about six inches out from where they would naturally hang.

"I'm so bored, this is frightful tedious."

"Why don't you drink some tea? You always manage to have some on hand. Still don't know how you pull that one off," she murmured to herself.

"What do you think I've been doing for the past quarter-hour? Guess, guess, guess," he was growing petulant, and Alice was not in the mood to play more games.

"You looked for three-leaf clover for about thirty seconds before you decided to annoy me; why don't you actually lend a hand and help me find the Cheshire Cat?"

"I might, if you help me put my arms down, it's quite unfortunate but I really can't seem to move them. And I was having such fun..." Thus proceeded about two minutes' worth of Alice attempting various methods of pinning the Hatter's arms to his side, with no results. His arms sprang back bouncily each time she pressed down hard on them—the Hatter for his part was consumed with a watchful amusement at her failure in trying to suppress his antics. Alice soon gave up the cause and returned to peering into trees.

"Could I call him?" she wondered aloud. "Saying 'Here puss-puss" seems so undignified and not at all what he would answer to, and he's so contrary I imagine he's already here and probably laughing at me..."

"Why do you want to find him? I distinctly recall your saying that he gave tremendously misguided directions—according to your untrained eyes—and then you said something about philology, or philosophy or something."

"From what I know of him, he seems like a very observant creature. Perhaps he saw something. I'm sure he's here, he's being stubborn, I would imagine."

"Watched cats won't boil."

"That doesn't--" Alice broke off with an aggravated sigh before the fateful phrase _make any sense_ caused her more problems.

"The Cheshire Cat really isn't the sort of creature you go looking for," said the Hatter sagely. "He rather turns up when one least expects it. Or, he appears over your shoulder when you aren't looking."

"Why can't I just _find _things when I need them, or pull them out of a great bag at simply the right moment?"

"You'd need an awfully large bag for that," said a detached and possibly helium-addicted voice from just behind Alice's left ear. She started in response and spun full circle. "But you'd never lose anything again," it said, and giggled in that patented way before whistling through a tooth. The Hatter adjusted his hat and pointed into the tree before crossing his arms.

"Is that the Cheshire Cat? Are you here?" She looked deep between a splay of leaves to find the burgeoning outline of pink and purple stripes floating strangely above the bark.

"Is who here?" was its echoed reply.

"You," said Alice pointedly with her hands akimbo, recalling with perfect clarity the last time she had run circles in a similar line of questioning with the mysterious creature.

"Me, who?"

"You, who."

"Yoo hoo!" he cried in an echo.

"Oh, stop, I can see that you're here."

"Oh! am I? I wasn't sure; so often I split my time between there and everywhere as well that I hardly know where I'm going or where I've been." The cat's smile came brightly into view, an untamed crescent pulling a grand toothy smirk up to the fur-crowned plum colored ears. Alice waited, and soon the cat's eyes bubbled up from beneath the grin like two yellow balloons held underwater until a critical moment. They bobbed and rolled and blinked, and suddenly there was a rather tubby feline sitting on the branch above her, smiling that knowing smile and resting on its elbow.

"Hello," said the cat warmly as though it were greeting a favored niece.

"How do you do," said Alice automatically.

"How do I do--"

"No! that's not what I meant," she said quickly. The cat's grin grew a little wider.

"You're looking awfully hard for something you can't seem to find," he said.

"I finally found you, though."

"Is that what you were looking for? Well, you've found it, so..." His tail came around in a swipe and began to erase the curvy form before Alice waved her hands.

"No, I wanted to ask you something." He lifted his fat tail just above his eye level, as if to cock an eyebrow askance in silent question.

"Do you know what happened to the White Rabbit?" The Cheshire stared at her with his wide golden eyes for a moment, and Alice felt the small suspicion that he would answer _Who?_ slide through her middle and leave again with the feline's hesitation.

"That... depends... on what... happened to the White Rabbit," he replied in easy dulcet tones, standing on his elbows and gesturing with his back paws.

"Well, he disappeared."

"Like this?" The stripes fell out of sight, leaving Alice attempting to follow any possible sign of his movement along the cross branches.

"I—I suppose so," she said squintingly.

"You suppose so? Then what--" and here he came back in pieces one by one--"Is really concerning about that?"

"It's not really of his nature, you know, he does have a rather strict schedule, engagements in court and such--"

"Since when do you care so much about the White Rabbit?" he asked, hanging upside down from his tail.

"But I've been charged by the Duchess to find what's plaguing the citizens, it's not that I care so much about him—I mean, I do, of course—but I'm only following my directive."

"Your directive," he repeated.

"Yes, what she told me to do. Have you seen the White Rabbit, though? Or anyone else who has gone missing? Surely you've noticed, it is rather difficult to live here without realizing it."

"Ohh, yes," said the Cheshire Cat. "I saw the White Rabbit."

"You did?!" cried Alice. "Where did he go?"

"At a court croquet game three months ago last week, he was there with his horn in a new stiff collar." The blonde girl sighed.

"I'm sorry, that isn't very helpful to me. I'm only trying to figure out this whole mess, it would be most helpful if you--"

"What you are thinking, it is correct," replied the Cheshire Cat, curling his squishy looking tail into a large spring coil and sitting on it with one leg crossed over the other.

"I—I beg your pardon?"

"And you may have it, but first tell me: what is it you're... really looking for?"

"The reason for all these people leavi--"

"Oh, searching for reason won't get you anywhere in a house of madness," and his voice was an even breathier drawl if possible. Alice felt goosepimples prickle along her elbows and frowned at the cat who was now doing cartwheels back and forth over his detached head.

"You are all deception and mystery."

"I only speak the truth; you must interpret it at your... discretion."

"Then I shall ask you, since you claim the truth: what is it I'm really looking for?" The Cheshire Cat made one final gymnastic leap, scooping up his head and rolling it back along his arm and onto his shoulder with a _pop_ before grinning a beaming smile back at her.

"Only you know for certain," he said. Alice shook her head at him and was about to turn and walk away when he spoke again. "Let me ask _you_ something, then: '_Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?'_"

"It's been a while since I've studied Latin..."

"The answer you're looking for is to a question you haven't asked yet," he said.

"To know to ask something I haven't even considered yet..." she mused to herself, "That doesn't seem fair to my mind or intellect at all. I'd have to be able to see into the future, or to read other people's minds. Or know everything at once."

"Not... necessarily, and knowing everything at once isn't something I would... recommend," said the cat, grinning strangely.

"That's impossible, you'd be driven mad—madder than, begging your pardon but it's true, madder than you lot—you'd go mad by the sheer volume of knowledge. One couldn't begin to store that much information somewhere. "

"It would be enough to drive anyone to the edge of existence and back." The Hatter had apparently grown bored again, decided to entertain himself by walking in that monstrous fashion, and chose this moment to trip over his own feet with a cacophonous outburst of stumbling and poorly-mannered vulgar phrases. Alice stepped over the awkward and stiff pile he was currently occupying to stand very close to the branch where the cat sat, flicking its tail in quiet amusement.

"I don't mean to be rude, but mightn't we turn our conversation back to why I originally came to find you?"

"Look deeper, and next time it won't be a striped feline you find," it said as she drew up face to face, its yellow eyes not seeming to glow now, but rather to be shifting like slowly rolling whirlpools, changing only in tones of the same color, almost an illusion.

"Should I not be talking to you?" she asked. The cat only smiled in answer.

"Is there nothing else you can tell me?" said Alice with a small sense of unfairness at not having her questions answered, just in the usual way. "Did you not see anything, anything at all when those creatures disappeared? If you know the truth, surely you can tell me that much."

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps you did see something, or perhaps you did not see anything?"

"You're barking, my dear, to coin a phrase, up the wrong tree."

"I knew I shouldn't have asked you."

"Shall I give you some advice?"

"If I'm able to translate it, but I suppose you will give me advice whether I want to hear it from you or not," replied the girl, who was feeling thoroughly frustrated and feeling a bit angry with herself over why she had had the brilliant idea of seeking out the Cheshire Cat and his nonsensical answers to begin with.

"The trouble you're seeking... is not what you're chasing after. It's what's hanging over your head." There was an intelligent weight to the way he spoke the last words of his sentence, and Alice repeated the phrase in her mind knowing now that the conversation was at an end.

The two stared at one another for several moments, blue girl's eyes into the strange shifting golden orbs of the cat, until Alice felt nearly overwhelmed by the feline's intense, unblinking gaze and took a step backward. The moment broken, she watched the cat begin to fade from view until only the stripes on his fur remained.

"Are you leaving, then?" asked Alice, who felt no small amount of desperation at being left behind with more questions than she had come with, and no questions answered at all.

"Disappearing, if you must know," came the faint echoing reply.

"Are you coming back?" she cried out, but there was nothing left of him. Turning to her companion, Alice saw that the Hatter had finally managed to break in his coatsleeves enough that they hung limply at his sides, the rest of him stock still and gazing uninterruptedly at the point where the Cheshire Cat had dimmed from view.

"I wonder if that's another one to chalk up in the missing column," she said thoughtfully.

"Indeed."

"Well, let's go find the March Hare again," said Alice. "I think after all this I could use a very quiet lunch followed by an even quieter afternoon in the hammock, asleep." The Hatter turned to follow her in the wake of the Cheshire Cat's mysterious disseminations, his own mind secreted from her in the blessed silence he swept along between the two of them as they returned to the house. For her own part, Alice was glad to be temporarily free of his normal chatter.


	7. Chapter 7

Thanks for your lovely reviews, I'm always glad to hear people's thoughts and comments. I'm also flattered to hear that my writing sounds like Jane Austen, but I promise I'm not nearly as good as she was. :)

I updated some photographs of famous paintings that resemble a scene in this chapter, the link to them is in my author profile. Check back there for each chapter—I'll keep adding new ones that are relevant to future things and people.

I know at this point it seems like we've taken such a massive detour from Brianna and Rain's story, but they've done a wonderful job and deserve lots of credit. Things will swing back around toward what they're doing later on.

The end of the last chapter went into a flashback, and we're actually further back.

* * *

_If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things._  
**Rene Descartes**

_When we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves._  
**Confucius**

"Oh, go on, then," the Hare had said in what he meant to be an indulgent voice—for she could not tell through the large piece of pound cake he had stuffed into his surprisingly roomy cheeks—and waved her off to town to find her way between shops and stall hawkers. Alice had to ask him to repeat himself several times—his words were beginning to sound nonsensical and came out in worrying phrases that sounded something like _Ph'nglui mglw'nafh cthulhu r'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, _which apparently translated to "If you get lost, don't panic. Ask the walls for directions, I'm sure they'd rearrange themselves for such a charming lady." She had not inquired as to the whereabouts of the Hatter, as the Hare had pre-empted any line of questioning with a kindly but full-mouthed, "He's out" when she first arrived that morning. Even when she understood him, the Hare did not give entirely reassuring advice, but Alice had smoothed her hair, taken a wicker basket from friend rabbit's kitchen, and walked along the yellow and blue bricks outside his boxwood gate trusting only her instincts and a vague memory of where town could actually _be.  
_

It had only been a few days since she had taken the keys to the refurbished cottage, and the delivery of a very large set of furniture had been preventing her from making thorough rounds of the nearby capital city. Just as well that she might do it alone, thought the girl as she ambled down the path, for the Hatter had been dragging on her in recent days. There was little he did not know, it seemed, and even less that was helpful to her handed-down fiat for investigation into the whereabouts of certain missing citizens. He could recite the genus of birds overhead by what flight pattern they took in the winter, but had not the slightest idea whether she might counsel with Father Time. When pressed, the Hatter took on a shifty look and began to mumble something about hoping the old bugger had wasted away. It was becoming clearer as time did go past that she would have to shoulder much of the burden in her orders and discreetly set aside the Duchess's recommendation that the Hatter act as her guide. For now, though, Alice was currently trying to avoid being crushed against a brick wall with a long hedge along the top by the crowd of people who were making their way to cross the street. It was not an easy affair, given the general penchant for oversized and dramatic fashion statements. Alice's own bustle seemed like a birdcage for a hummingbird compared to the one that nearly engulfed her from nearby; the garment had a small stool inside the wire compartment that its owner was currently resting on, but the original inventor of such a clever device had apparently not calculated for the sheer amount of fabric that would have to go over the frame itself, and so the lady's worsted wool was currently occupying a good fifth of the general area.

Our heroine did not think she had ever seen so many people in her life, and all of them with the same strange noses and eyebrows that the aristocrats at the palace had had a few nights before, though this rabble was decidedly more middle-class in a way that just sort of surrounded them and came out in invisible clouds whenever they breathed or blinked or turned their heads to watch the street signal boxes flip their colored panels. Now they were squeezing past her quickly, giving her no chance to move except forward in their wake, and she could get a better look at them close up as she was jostled along. No, they did not have quite the same posture or breeding as the courtiers. Or maybe it was all the packages everyone seemed to be carrying—this was the one thing that made Alice stand out from everyone else, and she felt a strong urge to correct and straighten her glaring difference with a few purchases to see what she could make of her newfound access to the Wonderland. Having no money, of course, was the main obstacle, but Alice was determined to fit in, even with an empty basket.

There were the usual sorts of shops along the wide cobblestone roads with exactly the sort of twist she expected from a place like the Wonderland, and she passed the time by taking a closer look at the shopfronts she and the Hatter had dashed past on their way before. In the dressmaker's, the girls with tape measures round their necks were holding up sails of cloth pulled out from the bolt, letting a pair of silver shears with robin's wings snip delicately but expertly through crepe de Chine with a bold pink stripe. Alice stood shyly before the large plate glass window etched with gold letters without going inside and watched in quiet fascination. It was all as she would have found _outre_ as a child, but here, from an older perspective, it wasn't so troubling that there should be living, sentient scissors dipping sweet and easy back and forth from bolts of fabric to a dovecote along the wall behind the counter when they were no longer needed.

She moved on and passed what she thought might be several government buildings with flattened domes for roofs; they were made of an aging brown stone and their decorative copper fleur-de-lis were turning a jaded green in the sunlight. None of them were marked, and they seemed to be more of a maze than the sort of buildings one would expect of a monarchical district. There was no efficiency in the architecture, just a series of dark alleys she could see from the street, and a looming building with ionic columns somewhere in the middle that poked its triangular front above the rest. Alice had no interest in becoming lost or otherwise exited into peril, especially without her distracted guide, wherever he may be today.

It was entertaining, though, the independence that being in a crowd afforded her. Just stopping to take a good long _look_ was exquisitely compounded by how many alien but familiar goings-on surrounded her, and Alice wandered up and down the high street until the sun was nearly overhead. The market stands were not quite the exotic, carpet-lined and incensed affair she had half-hoped for and imagined, but rather more like the coster-monger stalls at home, only with fewer things she could recognize. The fat middle-aged men with expertly curled and waxed mustaches and straw boater hats wrapped with bright red crown ribbons stood proudly in their white aprons, selling apples the size of pumpkins right alongside books with metal covers, jeweled pendants hanging in clusters from tent posts, and glass double-boiler percolators with brass valves that knew when to stop pouring coffee. Steam-operated whisks with brass wheels in their center whirred and pumped their way around a tiny track set along the rim of a mixing bowl, whipping air into egg whites as a demonstration. There was a lady who sold pocket watches all ticking and clicking in unison so loudly that she had to shout to haggle with her customers, and then there was the flower shop, with so many wares that it had begun to spill out into the street, in front of which Alice came to pause.

There, sitting in a very prominent display was a bouquet of white lilies-of-the-valley, looking for all the world as though her sister had placed them there. Alice waited, then stepped a bit closer when a man approached the vendor to talk, and put her face very close to the papery blooms to inhale the scent she hated so well. She concentrated on the cloying, sickening essence that was so far from the sweetness of roses that it was a wonder the two could both be considered flowers.

_"You are so curious sometimes," said her sister, arranging the brand new white-topped stalks among the decorative green shoots in a copy of the Portland Vase as she did every seven days. Her betrothed was punctual with his weekly offering. Alice was standing in the hallway just beyond the young woman's elbow, a small book in hand. She was looking at the embroidered border on the older girl's sleeve and trying not to concentrate on what she was saying._

"But you are so unselfish and good for offering to sit with Mama, I am sure she will be happy to have you at her side. It is a shame no one will see you at all back there in the pew, but I am sure I shall ask Honoria to take your place—she did want to be in the bridal party so keenly, after all. Are you absolutely certain you shan't stand up with me?" The question was ever so light, but Alice was well-trained and could hear the delicate sound of a young lady who is getting precisely what she wants but is behaving out of a sense of rectitude_._  
_  
"I am sure Mama wants me to sit with her. You want to be with your friends. I shall miss you terribly," she began stiltingly.  
_  
_"Ah! yes, I shall not see you until the reception, shall I? What have you there?" Alice did not answer for a moment.  
_  
_"It's nothing, I was just going to put it back in the library," said Alice, running her fingers over the gilt words along the spine. _The Age of Innocence_, it read_.

"What on _earth _is that thing doing?" Alice opened her eyes and stared into the flowers where the voice was coming from. She was mildly surprised to note that it was not the white lilies, but rather a common set of pansies pressed up against the stark blossoms that had been speaking to her.

"Do you always go about sticking your face into other creatures' businesses like that?" said a flower she could not see.

"Well?" demanded a purple and yellow flower aggressively.

"I'm only looking," she replied curtly, giving the blossoms a hard stare without feeling guilty; it was with more a sense of guarded sharpness that she allowed them the dignity of a response.

"We're a far nicer choice than those hideous white things," said someone pink in the back.

"They are rather awful," she agreed.

"But still nicer than you, I suppose. There's an air of something amiss with you, whatever you are." There was a passing around of smirks at this. Alice briefly considered buying the tussie-mussie just for the satisfaction of crushing it repeatedly beneath her heel, but instead leaned in closer.

"I wonder at your not withering away in the natural air without your precious glass roof in the hot house." The flowers opened their mouths in shocked unison, then closed them indignantly as she straightened up.

"Alright, then, miss?" asked the florist from behind his cashbox a few feet away. He was happily trimming stems from several bright purple and blue striped tea roses. "They do get a migh' cheeky sometimes, but they don't mean real 'arm... oh!" and his surprised exclamation came only after Alice turned her head to look at him politely. He tipped his hat. "Didn't recognize you, Lady, very fine day indeed. Say the word if you need something; at your service."

For a moment Alice did not put the words together, but then remembered what the Duchess had said._ Serve her the greatest hospitality. _Was it of national importance, this strange new person and this strange new name? Did everyone know, had they all been warned in advance and instructed to call her by title? Was there some secret means of getting the word out that someone in these parts stuck out like a smashed-up thumb? Alice briefly considered taking a better look at some of the handbills posted to the walls nearby to see if her face and the words "KNOW WELL THE LADY" were written there. It was disconcerting, she thought: her identity had been wrapped up in her own name for so long that it would be difficult to go about and respond to such a vague and what she felt to be randomly-assigned term.

Clouds had passed over the sun, and though the rest of the sky was a cheerful blue, the darkened buildings became more of a snapping call to what passed for reality to Alice, instead of the cooled harbor of a road where the market's other visitors were taking shelter from the heat. She half-closed her eyes, put a smooth and neutral expression on her face, and leaned back against the corner of an alley. From there she watched the clockmaker hold up a bright brassy pocket watch to a customer, who became so engrossed in the sway of its pendant that he quickly became dizzy and fell over, causing a sharp and outraged ruction from the flock of geese he had become acquainted with in a supine sort of way.

She wondered briefly how to get back to her newly finished cottage from whatever part of the capital she was in, but then realized that the egress was likely to be different now that she had turned off the market street and into some unrecognizable quarter with a slightly more exotic-looking clientele. She was alone and relatively lost and knew the walls would not answer her if she began speaking to them in the distress the Hare had been able to predict so easily. She was not lost. She could ask anyone at all where she was, they did seem like nice people well enough. There was nothing to be so worried about. Alice forced the moment of disquieted chaos within her to pass, and pressed her palms against the bricking behind her to cool her hands and mind.

After a moment of repose, she pushed out with the rest of the crowds, heading for a cross street lined with quainter shops and no hordes of women bargaining for zucchini. This street looked slightly more familiar, Alice realized, but she still did not quite recognize what she was looking for, or see anything that resembled the main road that led to the docks, any fountains or public coach boxes or hedge banks to signal a crossing over into the forest. She had got all switched up, and kept turning in circles, growing hotter as the crowds shifted and swayed around her, no one staying in the same place for more than a moment. It was under a sign which read ELEVENTY-FIRST BULWARK, however, that Alice came to a sudden halt.

Standing in the middle of the street full of people was a man wearing the shiniest red satin cape her eyes could stand to look at in this amount of sunlight. He had one eyebrow cocked and a cheeky half-smile on his face, and was talking to several women who were in clear admiration of his toreador's costume. The shortest of these three brunettes held several thick books in her arms with golden titles along the spine; the second was holding a small wooden painter's box and a large piece of cold press with a raw edge, and the last had turned her head to watch a fishwife throw bright red snapper on a mound of ice in the storefront nearby. Smirking and wallowing in self-delight, the bullfighter leaned down to speak to the second girl, who let out a pleasant laugh and elbowed her fish-watching companion in the arm, who smiled and smoothed out her apron.

He looked up and right at her, as though he had been expecting her to come this way and had somehow cleverly outwitted her in his choice of street on which to be standing in decorous fashion. With one hand on his side to hold the cape back and show off the rest of his outfit to the best of advantages, he did seem rather a dramatic spectacle. Alice shifted the basket on her arm to the crook of her elbow, stepping closer with a more relaxed and sardonic look, and the two of them sized each other up for a moment.

"So it's you," said Alice airily. The three women gave the man knowing smiles, which he returned before the women moved away. "Who were they?" she asked casually when they were gone.

"You know, I don't actually know their names, but they are a fresh breath of life," he said lightly with fists akimbo, watching them as the trio stopped to speak with a redhead who had joined them halfway down the street. Alice turned back to the man in the satin cape and got to the point of her approaching him to begin with.

"Why are you dressed like a bullfighter, where is your normal coat?" The Hatter suddenly looked comically deflated, bending over in half and frowning petulantly at her while dangling his arms nearly to the ground. He heaved a melodramatic sigh to complete the look.

"I'm absolutely pipped waiting for a bull to come along to complete my _mise-en-scene_, and this is deuced hard work, and that sort of thing, with you swinging along to lay free judgement on a bloke like this," he replied half-mournfully. "The coat, however, is in for a good cleaning. Must keep that velveteen in sporting condition."

"Sporting indeed, that is quite the flashy couture you have. Was this the only choice you had out of the wardrobe?" Alice eyed the outlandish ensemble carefully.

"I do agree, it is spectacular; it is also several hours early to be dressed for a costume ball being held so late in the evening, but when one has only a toreador's outfit in one's wardrobe, it isn't as though I can argue with that sort of obvious directive from a higher power."

"Ball?"

"Yes, the Duchess is throwing a costumed ball, and everything sort of fell into place, what with that horrendous tomato soup accident..." He frowned and murmured something about _getting back at that rabbit. _"Though I don't think the montera does me any justice, do you? Not the same as my bespoke hat, the poor thing had to stay home put safely away in its citadel of sequestration, and I think this makes me look like I have mouse ears." He firmly set the black felt piece over Alice's updo and stepped back to assess her.

"And now you look like you have mouse ears."

"Does the Duchess throw these balls often?" asked Alice, feeling a bit like she had just swallowed an east wind.

"Oh, rather not, it's a soiree for those who are in a unique angle to the assistance of the crown." He plucked the hat from her head and tilted his chin to the side to look at her carefully again. Alice did not speak, but watched the fishmonger and his wife in their storefront window argue over whether to pile the fish at random, or to arrange them in a careful and artful display.

"Well, shall we go find some shade and something to fill that whacking big basket of yours with? You're a lady, you can't have a home with no conversational pieces. We could find you a nice stuffed fish with just the right look of balefulness in its googly eye to hang over the mantel and scare off all the rummy sorts who constantly drop in around here—are you all settled in, by the way? I was meaning to ask you in case something needs reporting, mice in the kitchen singing and carrying on and making your supper, or owls having card parties in the thatch. Quite common infestations around here, unfortunately..."

"No, it is very nice, thank you," she said mildly, for she was thinking very hard.

"Of course, of course," said the Hatter with a bit of surprise, and the two began to meander up the street to where a large crowd of people had gathered.

It wasn't until the sea of people began to organize and part, and heads began bobbing in a southward direction, toward the docks, that Alice followed the Hatter's lead and slyly began moving forward. Now she could squeeze gently between two spectators and see a small procession coming up the street, one which would have surprised her had she not the presence of mind to see that the members of this parade going by foot was all the better for the advantage of the crowd's gawking.

The Duchess and her five princesses-in-waiting were gliding soft and wholly uninhibited, though no heralds or guards had proceeded them to shout out orders for the hoi-polloi to clear a respectful path. Like a flock of taffeta-clad swans heading for fashionable climes, they had arranged themselves into a vee formation, the Duchess in watery grey silk heading the attack and carrying a painted umbrella to throw her face into shade. Alice looked at each of them as they passed, heads held high, eyelids gently hooded, and gazes set upon the brush-stroked Japanese scenes their prima held, all these symptoms evincing such an alternately powerful and delicate sense of exclusivity and belonging.

The photograph in the dark library inside the Hare's cottage could have been taken but five minutes before; their expressions were so perfectly matched to the sepia plate on the wall. Her thoughts faded back to the evening when they surrounded her with ribbons and button-hooks and well-bred opinions. The single brunette, dressed now in blue and white instead of the yellow gathered satin of their previous meeting, briefly turned a single eye upon Alice, but did not make a motion with her hand or face, and the lady in the crowd watched the laced edges of a duchess and five princesses swish delicately against the street stones before turning the corner.

* * *

Alice had returned to her cottage relatively unscathed—she was unsure whether she could say the same for the Hatter, who had emerged victorious from a heated battle of negotiations with one of the stall owners and a competing haggler, holding one of the jeweled egg-like pendants aloft like a Golden Fleece or so many holy swords, a large red blotch under his eye but the usual crazed grin triumphant on his face. As it turned out, the clusters of the pretty tokens on sparkling chains were meant to hang off the sconce arm of gaslights inside houses where they could reflect the light there onto the walls and floor, dainty little mirror gems that spotted the wallpaper and gave a welcoming glow to a foyer.

"You don't have to do all of this, you know..."

"Do what, get into fights? That old girl was asking for it, I know she would have beat me senseless with that walking stick if I hadn't pushed her into the table, but look—now your floor will be 'thick inlaid with patines of bright gold'."

"... I don't really _need_ seven pounds of boiled leeks, I don't know what I'm going to do with them or how I'll repay you--"

"Why would you want to do that?" Alice had stopped briefly to craft a response she felt would be meaningful.

"I don't want to be a burden," she said after a moment. He considered this.

"Why would you be a burden?"

"I don't have any form of currency for this country," she replied, hoping that perhaps he would fully appreciate the sensitive depth of the situation, but he instead began rifling through his enormous pockets to pull out a large, dark rectangle.

"Well, have some of mine. If you want to choose your own_ Asparagales _instead of me getting into another punch-up with a blue-haired centenarian—as thrilling and entertaining as such altercations have proven to be—then you certainly must take some, for I have corking great sums of it, and you have need. Here," he said, and pushed something vaguely wallet-like between the paper-wrapped silver candlesticks and a small box with a willow pattern. "Might have to borrow that teapot from you sometime, though," he added quietly, looking at the blue square with interest.

She had managed to procure a side of beef—she hoped, rather than confirmed, this to be the case—without the seemingly interminable help of the Hatter after this, and was presently on her way to boil the bone, chopping vegetables under the kitchen window and watching the refracted sun turn red in the evening light. It was the first dish with meat she would have since she had been persuaded to travel, said Alice in her mind, and she was very glad to be getting away from all the bon-bons, cream puffs, and milk-diluted tea. She wondered at how the Hatter and Hare could subsist on only sugary delights at the tea party (though the Hatter had given the paper-wrapped parcel from the butcher's in Alice's basket a thorough, perhaps even longing, glance, as if hoping she would use it some other night when he could share in the dish himself). It was "_the_ tea party" now, for it had all begun to run together ages ago, and there was no point in trying to break any particular part of it down into quantifiable episodes. Every joke and laugh, every roll of Alice's eye and slosh of cream in the Hare's mug ran together and created an infinite loop of ongoing madness in activity.

She and the man with the white hair had parted near the main square's fountain, the Hatter rubbing his strangely-gloved palms together and Alice setting the heavy basket down for a moment. She was admittedly tired from spending the day in the sun, and was eager to begin her supper. He was deftly avoiding any questions she had about his previously mused thoughts on just heading into a field to capture a bull, or possibly kidnapping two able-bodied people and stuffing them into a large suit, and she wanted to express a degree of disapproval of such thoughts with the right dosage. The Hatter was hoping to win some sort of Best Costume prize, she could see, but protested that he could do just as well without a worthy foe.

"After-dash-it-all, it rather doesn't matter one way or the other—I have no plans for such things," he said with his nose in the air, tying a loose string he had pulled off his cape into what resembled a slip knot meant for leading dangerous behorned livestock out of pens and meadows. "None whatsoever," this said smiling at the work in his hands. More ominously, of course, she could hear him softly singing the bit of the _Marsellaise_ that dealt with the "braying of enemy soldiers in the field" when he finally turned to head back along the street, leaving the girl shaking her head and making a mental note to check the "horrific maimings and gougings" column in the obituaries the next morning. Alice rolled her eyes at the memory of this and began to sprinkle barley in the water to taste.

She was alone again, for the evening. Alice watched the bubbles roil and burst against the flaming copper pot and felt the expansive smallness of this new house move against her isolation, stretching and silently groaning, hungry for company. The boiling reminded her of the rolling tides at Westgate, and so she took up the wooden spoon to stir her thoughts away. The bubbles in the boil continued, mostly unabated, however. She could not have invited herself, Alice thought, partly to temper the house's plaintive creaking noises and partly to ward of bitter thoughts.

It only made sense to have a select guest list. Service to the crown... she had not come back with anything, had she? She had not done anything to warrant special favor or notice to begin with. And here she was surrounded by all the niceties the Duchess had promised, with no work to show. All on good faith in abilities she had not even demonstrated. No, there was nothing to be cross about. The party was likely to be a dreadful affair anyway, a mimeograph of the dinner party before, though with more feathers and themed outfits this time. The tiny voice in the back of her head came through regardless. _Why not her, though?  
_  
After Alice was satisfied with the progress of her beef consomme, she was faced with the dilemma of which room she was going to sit in and eat. This was not a matter of propriety, but rather of a series of unusual circumstances. There was the obvious choice of the kitchen, but her larderboard table was beset with packages sent from town and her purchases of the day. The breakfast room was too dark at night, and the dining room Alice found to be a taxing problem. It was nicely set, neatly decorated by her own hand, and directly facing another dark mahogany door the existence of which she found herself unable to comprehend, even with a relatively open mind and a high tolerance for happenings that usually brought a stunned look to her face. To sit with her back to this closed door annoyed her, and to face it she was unable to concentrate on eating. She was not necessarily afraid of it, it simply had a tendency to engage her natural curiosity in the usual way.

Upon settling into the house, Alice had given it a good airing and looked it over. She had gone through each room, created an aerial diagram of the bungalow in her mind, and long decided where the cherry and maple furniture sent from the Duchess was to go when she realized that the room behind the door could not actually exist. She had opened it, admired with no small surprise the contents beyond, and was halfway down the hall again before it struck her that the outside of the house did not line up with the dimensions this seemingly-extra room impressed upon her. Standing in her own garden where she and the Hatter had bolted through the boxwood, she stared at the back wall where the room should have been for a good twenty minutes, memorizing what the view from the window should have looked like. And when she stepped back inside to look through the dark door again, it was neatly impossible for the view to the treeline to be the same. Back outside she went again, and there was only a stuccoed wall with a thin, high jalousie window that looked sealed shut from where she stood.

This did not physically make sense, even when allowing for the strange brand of physics the Wonderland held itself to. Alice had even found the original plan for the house stuffed into a drawer in the bathroom vanity, and where her strange new room stood, there actually had been built a too-small hall closet with shelves unnecessarily installed. Happy thought indeed. She had not returned to the room since, instead choosing to keep the door and her mind to it shut, and quietly ask the March Hare at their next caucus whether his anomalous library had originally been part of the house. His reply was as strange as she could have predicted.

"Come to think of it now, I can't remember if it was originally there or not. I never bothered to look in there until I needed some closet space a couple of years ago and instead found I had a whole new room that didn't match anything inside or out. I never go in, I have no idea why it's there. Gives me the jibblies," he said, and shivered a bit, sloshing his tea about.

Alice was halfway in the hallway between the dining room and the dark door with a steaming bowl of soup in hand and an indecisive look on her youthful features. She breathed in, steadied her tureen, and setting her hand steadily on the brass doorknob, gave a gentle turn and opened the door.

The first part of this anachronous piece of the house was an ante-room, or perhaps sitting room would be a more accurate description. It had wicker furniture that had been artfully arranged for a large volume of company by whoever had owned the room previously—it was an expert's work and Alice suspected that whoever it was had been very good at entertaining. The far wall opposite the door was lined with a series of vertical plate windowpanes that acted as a wall of the room beyond, which as it turned out was an implausibly large conservatory that went on Alice knew not how far. She stood in this foyer on the threshold between these new rooms, peering off into the giant palm leaves that obscured whatever was inside and wondered if her footsteps would mar the perfectly smooth reflection produced by the ebony slab beneath the assortment of orchids and cherry blossoms she could not name.

She stood staring down into the tile, looking back at her own reflection as clear as a new mirror, yet as muddy as through a smoked glass. It was a bit like standing over a gorge with an invisible bridge, with the perfect and unshakeable knowledge that a supporting walkway was there, but with the equally unshakeable desire to test each step before venturing out, just a little way at a time. Just in case. It was not until her tiny boots made soft clipping sounds around the room that Alice realized how impossibly far up the ceiling went, glass panels with white panes between each that repeated almost endlessly. She turned a corner that was made up by a plant with leaves as broad as her skirts, and peered round to see a small fountain and many boxes of steamy red and yellow flowers with dinner plate sized petals next to the windows. It was warm and humid here, and Alice sat on the fountain ledge and watched the steam in her soup slowly dissipate in clouds toward her own nose.

It was a combination of restless boredom and frustrated uselessness that permeated the thick air and weighted Alice down enough that she grasped the sides of the fountain and rubbed the toe of her boot against the other until it shone. She was not feeling herself this evening; she did not even have the curiosity to explore the rest of this strange yet oddly comforting place. It did have the air of the sort of room one would find back home. But she did not know what to do, and this concerned her more presently. There was nothing else to do but eat the beef and try to plan for the future, she thought, but she did not know where to go beyond where she was now. Alice dipped the spoon forward and let the pause call forth new questions.

What did the Duchess really want from her? _Discover them and their reason for leaving_, she had said. Were the residents simply walking away as the monarch had implied, or was there the something in the forest that moved the earth with its lumbrous gait? What if it tore the thatch off roofs and plucked creatures out of their sitting rooms? Alice brushed the tips of her fingers over a violently purple water lily near her left hand and let these thoughts come together. She wanted to help, if only to have some inscrutable purpose that would satisfy a higher power, but wondered if she was doing the undoable, or could not move forward alone without help.

She tasted those words again in her mouth. _Could not move forward without help_. As if she could go nowhere sans Hatter, could not function in this world without someone to lead her around by the nose and purse, as if she were missing the second half of a pair of something. What had the Hatter done lately for her in his promise to help her case, besides thrust upon her more money and vegetables than she could use? Behaved boorishly at several day's worth of tea party, one memorable moment of which resulted in the loss of a brand new ribbon (for he had used it to cut a thick wheel of cheesecake into what resulted in very ragged and spoilt edges), and sung more bad snatches of colorful songs than Alice knew of all songs put together. He was not totally without a purpose, of course, but she could not believe that she had needed the services of a man dressed in satin trousers to lead her out of a market high street; it was without a doubt most embarrassing.

And this last thought was what set events into motion for Alice. Not the part about the shiny toreador costume, though that did have its own eventual impact on our story, but indeed, the thought about the day's earlier awkward events. Alice was not a terribly bold sort of girl—she had been raised with the best of feminine intentions—but she had gotten through the strange gardens twice before, and as a child, and even under rather remarkable circumstances involving mushrooms and cakes and serums. This set something within her. It was not with newly-discovered grandiose intentions of sallying forth to alter the course of the universe itself that Alice rose from her seat on the fountain's edge, but rather with the small silent promise that she would sort everything out somehow.

It did not matter that the pocketbook the Hatter had given her was heavy with a brick of paper notes, she thought, there was most assuredly a way for her to see through to satisfactory completion the task the Duchess had called forth upon her without unnecessary indignities. She had done it before, why not settle the crown's conviction for her being there without the hinderance of someone so easily distracted? No, surely she could find her own path toward discourse with someone who had information, and without the quiet discretion she had looked toward earlier in the day.


	8. Chapter 8

My computer blacked out on me back in June, and I did not have this chapter backed up. It's been very difficult to get back to the point where I was before. I'm also starting law school soon, so fair warning: there will probably be a very long wait until the next chapter. Possibly around Christmas. I'm really sorry about this, but it looks like it's coinciding with the original comic's hiatus as well.

The standard disclaimer applies. I don't own these characters, I just like to mess with their heads. Brianna plus Rain plus Alice plus Reginald equals awesome fun times. There are new pictures in the Flickr gallery, and one of a white-haired man in a dashing red coat that I can't stop staring at. Another is of the hat in the last scene and another of the original hat Alice mentions. There's a big clue somewhere in that picture.

Send reviews—it's painful watching the tracker count climb but to have silence on the boards. I do put a lot of hours into this and it is really rewarding to hear nice things about it. Plus it makes me excited enough to motivate the next chapter into existence. To those of you who have been kind enough to put your thoughts into words already: thank you, sincerely. You are the reason this continues.

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

Henry Miller

* * *

Alice did not go to the Hare's cottage firstly the next morning; she smarted from her thoughts of the night before and the long time she had spent with the cooling soup tureen upon her knees, staring at a bog palm in an Indian vase and considering what needed to be done.

Now she was off to amble in the forest toward the green gate, to explore on her own and glean what she could from this new place without the distraction afforded so easily by one with too much time on his hands or the impatient panic that bubbled up within her own breast when her mind wandered too far home. Now there was nothing to see, nothing to think upon, nothing to cause anxiety but the glorious delicate mixture of celadon and Brunswick green in the leaves and herb matting the stones beneath her shoe, turning her thoughts to a light fancy of tea in a porcelain eggshell cup. It was wondrous what nature did for the creative path of the mind, she thought.

Alice did not quite know where the forests of the Wonderland ended and England began, but in reconsidering her confusion the day previous, she kept the thought in mind that this was an entirely different situation. Trees and rocks were not buildings and people; perhaps if she did speak to the maples and oaks they would open like a curtain onto the wall that indicated her original beginning and also perhaps a fresh start on the investigation. Retracing her steps with experience and knowledge would be far easier, and she could have a better look at things without insane people pirouetting around singing about whatever nonsense a "Sheik of Araby" was.

Amid the near-silent swish of willowy Spanish moss came the clicking of a rook, she rather thought, and as Alice peered up into the branches she very nearly lost her head tripping over a large root. Windmilling her arms to catch herself, she caught hard against the trunk and watched the cognac-colored wallet the Hatter had placed in her hands the day previous slide from her pocket to smack against the bark. Out spilled colorful linen bills shimmering glinty in the pale morning light, silent silver fish against the stones. Alice bent, stacked them smartly back together and gazed at the topmost one.

"There's not even anything written on here. It's nothing but runes and strange drawings," she mused quietly. "I wonder what they're called."

"Clams," said a strange youthful voice nearby. She popped her head up to see a young boy in dark knickerbockers leaning in an effortless slouch against a tree nearby, his dark fringe poking out from underneath the brim of a Gatsby. He was no more than eight or nine years, but the look in his eye suggested a far greater sense of self-importance than what mere children cultivate in youth. "Do you get it?" he said, and Alice was so momentarily fascinated by the old-young double edge in his oddly intelligent voice that she looked down at the bills in her palm out of slight embarrassment when he did not go on.

"Clams? Such an informal word for a currency; is that the only name they give their money in this country?" She looked up into the silence and realized she was alone again. Only momentarily, though, as the boy's voice came from the opposite edge of the tiny stand of trees.

"Why do you want formal names for your money? You either spend it or save it, you can't think of becoming friends with it. Money will never reap rewards for you unless you make it work and not coddle or pet it."

"I was only curious what I might call them at the market," she said by way of retort. The voice came from behind a different tree now, but did not seem to be listening to her.

"Saving money is to coddle or pet it; it doesn't work when it sits in one spot," it said from high above.

"Money sits in a bank and grows—a plant may sit between two rocks and never move but work itself higher toward the sun in a steady but imperceptible way," said the voice now from far away.

"Is there an echo in here that I am not a part of?" said Alice, remaining ignored.

"But that is still work regardless," this from up on a branch.

"Passivity and work are therefore too similar to tell apart."

"Then we are agreed."

"Of course," the voice replied to itself. Alice was tired of spinning in wide circles trying to tell where the voice was coming from, but on her final turn she nearly clubbed the young boy in the shoulder and fell against a tiny maple tree to steady herself. Her head spun, and she was seeing double. Or quadruple. Maybe only triple.

"Oh my goodness, there's more than one," she said. The boys waited as Alice recovered. She took a very careful look at them both—there were only two now, and the discernible difference betwixt them both were the toys in their hands. Every detail, from the wrinkly twists in their argyle socks to the number of rolls in their shirtsleeves to the knowing smirk on their faces, were precisely the same, but mirrored. The one on the left, however, had a golden slingshot with a purple handle in his hand, the other a toy pop gun in the same violent colors. "What am I saying; of course there's more than one, you're Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee, aren't you."

They responded by tilting their heads to opposite slants and giving her an appraising look.

"You are _much_ removed from what I remember," she spoke at last. "From tiny men to boys—" The one on the left interrupted her.

"Surely you have learned by now--"

"--as one might hope if you are to be successful here--" continued the other before Alice managed to break in.

"It's all perception and mystery. You were little men because you _were '_little men,' precisely so; so mature and grown, yet still from your noses growing freckles—which I'm sure are blooming in mirror images too."

"Told you she had gotten wiser," said the one on the right to the one on the left.

"I thought I said that," replied his twin.

"You're right; I saw you saying it and thought it was myself."

"How do you two tell the difference between yourselves if you can hardly remember who said what?" as soon as the words had escaped her lips, Alice saw the potential for a two-hour verbal table tennis match on the finer points of personal identity, and she cringed, bracing for the pending confusion. But the two boys exchanged a mild glance before each lifting the hand holding the toy to reveal dual pockets embroidered with the words 'Dum' and 'Dee' in cream stitching.

"Why are you in the forest? And what are those things for? Are you having another battle?"

"We do not always fight with each other," said Tweedle-Dee.

"Most assuredly," replied his brother.

"Are you having a battle in the forest?" asked the first boy.

"No," said Alice at this new turn in the conversation, for she saw her opportunity now. "I am looking for something that's causing creatures to vanish. Have you heard of anyone disappearing lately?"

"People come and go oftentimes, they are not bound to this place," was the reply.

"No, permanently is what I am given to understand. Utterly and entirely gone."

"Are you looking to disappear yourself? Why are you so interested?"

"Oh, no, I'm only trying to prevent more people from leaving. The Duchess has asked me to find out what's happening." The two boys exchanged a glance.

"Have you asked the Cheshire Cat?"

"I haven't seen him yet. I've only just begun; I don't really know where to start."

"It sounds as though you aren't asking the right questions," said Tweedle-Dum.

"What sort of questions do I need to be asking?" replied Alice, a tad exasperated.

"That is a much better question," he replied, smiling. She sighed.

"I agree," replied the other. There was a pause, and Alice shifted the leather book of bills from one hand to another.

"You wanted to know what those were; how many do you have?" one of them asked, gesturing at the parcel. She held it out to him, and he thumbed through it with a ripping sound like a deck of cards before pulling his hand away.

"Quite a large stack," he said to his brother.

"Where did you get it?" asked the other. Alice looked more carefully at the brick in her hand.

"The Mad Hatter gave it to me," she replied, flipping past blues and greens into iridescent saffrons and navy bills with tiny stars in their skies. The twins did not speak for a moment, and Alice glanced up when the silence grew too loud. "Is there something wrong with that? Don't tell me it's no good."

"You had better keep hold tight of it," said Tweedle-Dum.

"Why is that, will he take it back from me and charge interest?" she found herself amused, but neither boy twitched a smile.

"He is a very private person, the Hatter. He likes to hold his cards close to the vest, I think."

"Mmm," said Tweedle-Dee in agreement.

"What does that have to do with his giving me money?" said Alice.

"Well," said Tweedle-Dum in contemplation, "He must like you, or consider you his friend; I did not know he was so generous. There were rumors that he is quite well off, but--" Alice nearly asked _But what of it?_ before the other boy leaned in and spoke quietly.

"Haberdashery is a comfortable way to make a living, but one does wonder." She looked down at the money again.

"Perhaps he is very careful with his money, and lets it grow in the proper bank. You both agreed yourselves that money can work even when it sits still." The two boys exchanged a brief sly look before Tweedle-Dee looked serious and continued.

"One wonders what else goes on in his head. He is quite strange, you know. I am sure he is an excellent friend to his confidantes, but it is not as though he makes his living giving away ribbons and pins out of the shop. Perhaps he has work on the side, as a hobby or leisurely pursuit." She considered this. The Hatter had said it readily himself, but only in the broadest fashion. _What, you think hat-sharpening is the only thing I've ever done? _Somehow Alice did not feel quite right discussing the Hatter suchly. Not only did it negate her plan to leave him out of her plans (which was beginning to seem impossible), but it made him seem... closer, somehow. Depth and secrets were not something she associated with the man, and knowing more about him seemed a dangerous field to enter.

"How much is this, really? Did you come to a general figure, or should I even ask?"

"It is not as great a sum as a king's ransom, and not quite as small as a small fortune, but it is enough, and well that you have it."

"It does seem an awful quantity; you wouldn't perhaps like a new bag of shot, or a new cork and string for your gun, would you?" Alice looked at them kindly like a newly minted young aunt who is unsure of where the line between indulgence and spoilage closed faster than a depth charge and a submarine.

"I am sure you think yourself very kind to offer us a portion of your sum, but we have no need for money."

"The forest is amusing enough, and we have ourselves and each other at once."

"You two are in the forest quite often, are you not?" she asked, a fresh thought coming to mind. The pair nodded in time. "Have you heard a great something moving about in the forest, knocking over trees—a monster, perhaps? It makes the strangest sound, almost like--"

"Like an enormous beehive?" said Tweedle-Dee suddenly. His twin turned to give him a strange look.

"No, it didn't," he said in a pointedly quiet voice. The two boys were suddenly glaring at each other, and Alice remembered something from a very long while ago.

"Hang on a minute," she said, breaking the silent tension, "I thought you two never disagreed or contradicted each other. Now, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum, did you or did you not hear something in the forest?" The two boys suddenly had the evasive and guilty look of impending escape upon their looking glass faces, and began to inch further away from the tree they had been leaning against. "Wait!" she cried out, but one had already disappeared into the dappled shade and beyond. The other—she did not know which now—hesitated near a sapling just outside the clearance and pointed into the branches above Alice's head to a clicking black bird shuffling back and forth, watching them imperiously.

"I can only tell you this—it makes the rooks very anxious and jumpy. You need more help than wandering about in the forest can bring—find the Cheshire Cat, he sees everything." And the boy was gone after his twin, leaving Alice to sigh in frustration. All that, and she had barely anything except a few troubling facts about someone she had not wanted to think of today. Alice made to turn toward the bricked path beyond the trees, but something enormous not twenty yards hence turned the tips of her fingers frigid.

It was the wall. There was no green door, but there was a stretch of the wall, and trees on the other side hanging down over it. She could practically reach up and touch something so close to home, so near to her house and her family and her sister and the wedding--

Alice turned and walked toward the path resolutely, ignoring the buzzing clicking sounds that followed.

* * *

"He is not here," said the Hare distractedly, for he was heaving and pulling on the large handle of a brass steam press, which Alice eventually took hold of and managed to flip down, resulting in an outpouring of fresh tea. The Hare looked at her and shrugged.

"Perhaps he is in the shop in town." She was afraid he would say something along those lines. Her efforts to avoid the Mad Hatter had seemed to result in cosmic alignment of their two names—she was fated to forever be either talking about or talking to the man himself, and Alice was beginning to tire of things on her own. She had been to Father Time, who had asked of her mission and orated for a solid hour the advantages of being on time for the mundanest of minutiae—down to the millisecond, he had insisted alliteratively--which the Hatter above everyone else and all expectations routinely failed to do, and wasn't that man _just_ the worst rakehell known in these parts, weren't his fashion accoutrements the _absolute_ lowest of the low, didn't his hair hang the worst way possible and oh, wasn't it simply a shame but Father Time had no idea of any of this disappearance stuff after all that anyway.

This had gone on for most of the morning with Father Time's scant mentions of and referrals to a number of creatures Alice could vaguely remember from her salad days, she thought now, dashing olive oil onto Romaine hearts and popping cherry tomatoes inside her mouth, letting each tiny explosion fuel her quiet contemplation. There was nothing else for it; not even the Hare would give her so much as the tiniest respite from the madman.

"You certainly should go and find him if you require his... unique assessment of the world around us," said the aforementioned rabbit delicately, wrinkling his nose in curiosity at the plants on Alice's plate. It was a late lunch and very nearly tea itself; the sun was at a slant in the sky and there had been neither here nor there of the person on everyone's mind and tongue. "After all, he's likely to stay in that shop of his for days on end if you don't go rouse him from whatever manic fever has taken over him this time—last time he went off, the ladies all wore full peacock fans on their berets for six months; nothing but peacock in the butcher windows after that..."

"I don't mean to be rude, but wouldn't you know best in this situation? You are his closest friend, and you do know the way to town better than anyone," said Alice.

"Oh, he won't pay the slightest mind to me," said the Hare. "You are far more likely to win over his thoughts." She stopped chewing momentarily to stare at him, startled. The Hare tilted his head to one side. "You command a better rein on the tone of voice likely to gain someone's attention," he explained mildly. "I am more likely to be distracted, myself, and wind up ensnared in town rather than here, where I belong amongst the tea kettles." He waved his paws broadly like a patriarch and smiled proudly at his brood of china.

"Oh," said Alice.

* * *

There was a wooden sign hanging from chains that read "Haberdasher," and nothing else. It was shaped in a simple rectangle, not a hat, which did surprise her. The hand that wrote it was clear and precise, the thin serifs on the resulting letters being oddly subtle and sophisticated. The wooden door had only a brass handle, no sign indicating the current status of open or closed, and the sun's reflection in the large window with gold lettering perfectly copied from the shop sign showed her only beige oilcloth shades. She had picked her way carefully through the bricked streets, having memorized the lay overhead by the map in the Hare's library, into which he hesitantly admitted her. Alice did not hesitate to turn the handle bulb, but she opened the door slowly to peer inside the darkened shop.

"Hello?" she called softly. "Mr. Hatter? Are you in?" She blinked to adjust in the dim light, and saw that each window had a shade pulled far past its point of resistance, the cord and medallion pooled on the floor, some nearly jerked clean off their beams, as though during a fit previously thrown. She could see the dark forms of standing wardrobes and cabinets everywhere, but no hats. This was not a showroom, apparently, though there was a wooden counter off to one side next to a glass case, behind which must have been another room—the only light came from nearby. She moved softly toward one of the glass cases near this inner doorway, quietly stepping on the balls of her feet to see what sat within. There were hatpins there, and Alice tried vainly to pick out the different colors and gemstones on each, but left this project when something new occurred to her. Alice caught herself as she had caught herself long before in the midday noonlight with her packages, holding her breath now against the close room.

There was a thin and sweet high sound emanating from somewhere nearby, and she stopped to listen to its staggering clarity. It rolled and pitched itself around in elastic oscillations, coming and going, first one thing and then another, an aural zephyr in the dusty shop. It was bitterly cold, like ancient frosted ice, and then rapturous and lonely all at once, a melody on one tonal note that came from everyone and nowhere at the same time. She recognized it from somewhere a very long time ago, and that single memory brought forth the smell of her mother's Cottleston Pie, and that smell brought forth the taste of first wine at autumn, and that taste brought with it the thought of lard soap her mother had scrubbed her tongue with for getting into the decanters. What had the power to raise memories and yet sound so distant, so unapproachably sharp and delicate at the same time?

She found her balance and stepped so quietly past the counter, where a thin beam of light had found its way into a space between the door jamb and a curtain that had been pulled aside. The room past the jamb was as full of the light of day as the foreroom was dark and closed off. The picture window that made up the entire back wall was flooded with late afternoon sunlight; dancing particles of dust dipped and swirled and flowed in the open air. At the large work table, his hat upturned in front of him, the Hatter sat looking seriously and in a contemplative fashion at his moving hands, which were obscured by the bespoke piece. Alice breathed in as silently as she could.

He was _golden_. His hair, specifically, though there was a twinge of straw-like coloring nipping at the rolls of his shirtsleeves and waistcoat. The sunlight that poured through the glass behind him could not do this, and yet it was the only light source around him. It was no halo effect, no iridescent trick of the prism, no settling of gold dust between the follicles after a particularly high-spirited afternoon too near the lapidary's workbench. The white hair had seemed like something so deeply ingrained in the top of his head; it startled her how easily it could have been this shade instead all along. Perhaps she had not looked correctly the first time, for she was half convinced already that he had been this way since the day they had met first.

But then again, Alice could not be sure, for now she looked upon him as though in and out of focus at the same time. He was there, he sat there quite clearly at some sort of work she could not see, and was himself but for the new coloring. She could see nearly every hair—perhaps that was it. Every hair crossing over on itself, and every freckle in their infinite populous, and the thin, nascent lines in the soft crinkle that his faint squint produced beside his left eye. These tiny realities, these remains of the day upon his face, had seemed so well blended into the blurring that his personality had produced before, and now she could see them. Her earlier solution to not think of the Hatter in any sort of actual depth was well for naught; here he sat, perfectly real with who knew what swirling about beyond his irises.

As Alice came to the conclusion that there was indeed something for her to consider in this and that perhaps she should resign herself to a fate spent scrying out truth from whatever visions and advice he may deign to put forth, she did not notice the clear noise cutting off until a pair of loud leathery snaps popped the silence.

The Hatter had folded one arm over the other on the table, his hat pushed aside and a crystal glass of water reflecting sharp, sluicy diamond patterns on the floor. What had made the sound indeed, she realized, was the goblet. A simple effect of the fingertip circled around the lip of a glass. He was staring at her, waiting, with a strangely mild expression. She blinked hard and remembered why she was there.

"I'm so sorry, I did not mean to simply drop in by such a fashion, but I did call for you," Alice said. He seemed to be watching the patterns of light reflect on the wall near her, and did not respond for a moment.

"No, it's quite alright; I imagine I'm being sought after—is it not nearly tea?"

"I thought it was always tea where you come from," she replied, resting her cheek on the doorframe. He flexed his fingers, adjusting the gloves—for it seemed her call to reality had been the sound of his palm work gloves going back on with some haste--and smiled his usual genial lightness.

"I say, you've never been here, have you? Look and see what's behind that door--" he gestured to a wall she had not the thought to glance at with two identical doors and she moved nearer to place her hand on one, "No, not _that _one, never that one. The _other_ one, the other storage room." She peered inside at the closet—perhaps one person could comfortably stand inside and pull out the large blue and white boxes with faded script on their labels. "Open one!" he commanded her from without, and just as Alice reached for the one level at her nose, he was behind her, scoffing with irritation and retying his brown apron.

"No idea what you're doing, not a thing at all," he said loftily, shoving her into the ladder and lifting several lids at once to glance at their innards.

"But you said to open one!"

"It's not a game of chance, it's a pull of the strings of fate! _The perfect hat_." Alice did not feel that the Hatter's rummaging through various hatboxes was exactly the 'pull of fate,' but refrained from saying so.

"How do you know which one is _the perfect one_," she replied with some necessary drama in a low voice, looking up to see the ceiling. She expected boxes towering into infinity, stories of boxes, millions of boxes; there were but a dozen or so.

"It will be the _right one_," he replied happily. "_This_ one," he said, standing on his toes to reach the topmost box, and neatly pulled with his fingers. "It's a picture hat."

"_The _picture hat?" Alice said with some excitement.

"No, but a rather nice modern copy, I've always thought." Alice lifted the cream striped lid and folded back layers of thin paper._ This one_ was lovingly placed therein, a wide-brimmed lady's hat formed to show the perfect cascade of hair underneath for a portrait sitting. Turning the black felt to inspect the black and white and grey striped crown ribbon, Alice was the smallest amount surprised. Simple as it was, the stitching was rather fine, and it did lack a specious and offensive amount of peacock feathers. She looked up at the boxes again.

"Are these all yours? I did not imagine you a milliner, I thought you specialized in gentleman's headgear." He took the hat from her lightly and set it atop her sausage shaped curls, then leaned in close to her face to tie the ribbon beneath her chin.

"I was never terribly proficient at proper ladies' hats, being that I never wear them myself—and being an old hand at the top hat game," he said, the leather tips of his gloves brushing against her chin, "but I do have a small collection of older experiments. I keep them about to make an example of myself to myself." He paused and leaned back to assess her. "Would you be so offended to wear a hat out of season?" the Hatter asked, squinching up his mouth as if unsure. She looked for a glass, and he proffered a silver circle with an extendable arm out from the bare wall.

Alice looked at her reflection and saw that it was indeed a beautiful and well structured hat for the shape of her face, the color of her hair, the trail of her curls past her cheek. She watched the Hatter fiddling with the back of the hat, and the distant look in his pale blue eye, and knew he would not steer wrong. Of course it was the perfect hat, it was a rare classic form crafted by a knowing hand. He paused, with his fingertips on the brim and looked back at her in the mirror.

"Do you like it?" he asked quietly.

"It's lovely," she said, and they stood silent for a moment, looking at each other in the silver ring before the Hatter leaned in to frame their faces next to each other.

"Do you want it?" he asked. She turned her face to look at him sidelong.

"You would let me have it?"

"No, I would not let you have it," he said, and Alice very nearly replied when he spoke on, "I would give it to you. If you want it."

"Truly," she said, tilting her chin to see it from another angle, "You have already surpassed yourself with that deck of money you sent my way, I can't impress upon you enough how unnecessary all this is." He did not answer. She paused and turned her head in the opposite direction. "I must say again how lovely it is, though."

"You look very fetching." She turned to him and smiled archly, teasing from a safe distance rather than directly addressing his comment.

"I'll take it," she said in the buyer's voice. The Hatter reached forward and pressed the end of her nose with his gloved thumb.

"All yours," he said, and left the closet for Alice to look back into the mirror.


	9. Chapter 9

Are you asking yourself some questions right now? One of those questions could be, "Valadilenne, did you release this chapter on November 1 to purposely get everyone to wish you a happy 24th birthday?" And I could be like, "_I sure did,_" because, you know—true story.

Thanks very much for your reviews—I do appreciate them all.

Carroll and Disney and Brianna and Rain; awesome!

But Terry and Julie cross over the river  
Where they fell safe and sound  
And they don't need no friends  
As long as they gaze on Waterloo Sunset  
They are in paradise  
"Waterloo Sunset," The Kinks

* * *

It was far too hot.

For some time the sun had come to rest in the skies over the Wonderland, and temperatures she had expected near tea were expressing themselves with precision at dawn, or even before. As if standing before the intense key of an oven in July, Alice was beginning to wonder if it were summer year round in this strange new world.

It could have been a sponge for her brow, the singular fringe springing from where she had pinned it, a few tendrils sticking to her in such a reminiscence of childhood sickness. Alice frowned and flung from her with no small disgust the oriental paper fan which she had appropriated from a drawer in the Hare's cottage to bring weak and insufficient relief in the nauseating humidity. England had never been this hot. She had never been this hot, even recollecting moments among the delicate flora in her conservatory. Greenhouses are always hot, but she dared not go near the dark wood door now. Ensconced beneath the consecrated layers of artistic dress which still held tenfold pockets of heat too near, Alice was frustrated and wanted to throw something else as well, but there was nothing at hand to relieve her from the twin suns of overreaching emotions. One for the heat, and another for—well.

Perhaps, dear reader, you had nodded, confident that _d__é__tente_ between the Hatter and Alice had finally begun in his charmingly bestowed largesse. Indeed, some measures of pleasant regard between them had begun to show thin smoke, but whether these were signs of some summer bloom or necessity in a foreign land remained to be seen. At any rate, relations had unfortunately broken down somewhere between a chucked pot of strawberry jam and a flagrantly crooked game of Checkers. They two were no enemies, mind you, but the Hare felt that any brokerage of democracy would have to wait until after Alice overcame her firm insistence on sitting far enough away from the Hatter at the table that red preservatives would fail to assail her in a white dress. The man was, for his part, apparently keen to make some effort toward reconstituting Player 2 and insisted on invoking her spirit of competition with derivative sports. It was starting to work.

"Fungible," said the Hatter. The exasperated sigh which emitted from Alice's general location was that of a feral cat who is tired of being poked with pitchforks by local children, but is far too boiled down in the humors to really get the pep to do something about it, and so the lashing swipe of her paw winds up being more of a halfhearted gesture of dismissal. "Refusing to play is forfeiture, and I've taken the last three straight," he continued. His voice was beginning to drone, and that irritated her well enough, but he was winning their game and she was too hot to let it go.

"Crepuscular," she said after a long pause, far too long. They swayed for a moment in the dead air.

"Kakistocracy," he said too soon, and pulled his foot up from the ground to rest it among the two of them for the seventh time. This, and the smugness in his voice, was enough, and Alice extracted herself from the hammock, with a more animated motion than she had intended, to stand in a scrap of overhead shade and glare at the man in shirtsleeves, who was smiling benignly at all the netting space he now commanded alone. A slow roll of actual... _perspiration--_she enunciated the thought at a shuddering distance in her mind--was threatening to slide down from where her hair was tied in a loose bun. She balled her hands clammily into fists and made an attempt at ignoring it.

"I'm going inside," she said, and stood right where she was.

"You could take your shoes off," replied the man in what he apparently felt was a courteous gesture.

"You haven't," she flipped back. He knocked his large shoes together and sighed contently. Slate blue socks were bunched about his ankle, and a pale length of skin exposed itself to the whole world and everybody, but especially her. Where she stood. Sliding together at the joints uneasily and with a sickened discomfort.

"I'm not as warm as you are."

"I'm also not a thoughtless fool," she said crossly, and thought about folding her arms over her chest in a final gesture, but Alice thought perhaps she did not have the wherewithal to risk more heat. He stretched out his arms, bizarrely still gloved at their ends, shrugged, and began to hum quietly to himself.

While she was awfully fond of curiosities in their strange and unique forms, Alice was, by all opinionated accounts of substance, a decent and reasonable girl, an upstanding girl, one who remembered her decorum and held a keenly skeptical eye up to the telescope's glass that looked out over the lands and experiences that would lay before her over the years.

An eye which plainly beheld the struggle between obstinate chaos and austere reason implicit in all things and knew that both were in a mutual half-nelson and that therefore chose to uphold the proper bearings of genteel ladyhood while remaining at least aware of the opposing counsel, so to speak. Alice did not become unreasonably frantic in the face of such rampaging oddities that she had been dragged through as of late; this was insupportable given her years of utmost training in the _ars ladying_. But she was aware: if Alice's reason were physically manifested in the form of a large field of fresh white paint, the very smallest of black chaotic dots existed on the outer fringes of her consciousness. Like the Asian philosophers who see the world harmonized between ameboid halves of a circle, Alice was a little bit this and a lot of that.

As such, the duality of mind stemming from a proclivity toward both the absurd and the perfectly rational was quietly housed in a careful balance of inward moderation between the two, with a courteous and preferential nod toward all things appropriate. She was neither too ridiculous and silly as to awaken each morning with the notion that the dew drops on a local spider's net were "wedding veils of the elves," nor was she so dull and unthinking that she could not appreciate the morning sunlight on the plaster molded ceiling as she opened her eyes and asked herself that eternal question, "What now?"

This was, however, neither the thought on Alice's lips nor the consideration of her own nicely-heeled comportment as she turned and nearly stomped out of the Hare's garden. The colorful turn of phrase she did choose to fling over her shoulder caused the Hatter to see her off with peals of laughter and a triumphant shout of the word _tmesis_ (which did not count toward the Hatter's lifetime score) as the gate _clank-banged_ shut.

* * *

She was casting stones into the river. Or rather, Alice was attempting to skip stones, but she was distracted and each one sank with a deeper note of _shplunk_ than the last. Finally she half-fell, half-sunk to the mossy bank and looked about her, then gazed at her own face down in the moving waters, calling out to her with relief immediate. She tried arranging the skirts so they lay as thin as possible, but the rushes on the other bank kept bobbing against each other with a rustling sound, causing Alice to look up every moment or two. It was beyond mannerly, beyond what proper ladies did. But the heat was inescapable—even among the trees it felt thick and hazy.

At least she could take down her stockings. Without straying her eyes from a roaming survey of the forest surrounding, Alice popped out the buttons in her boots and began to peel the white hoses down, stuffing them back in the ankletops and sitting with her legs tucked up beneath her as if she had not moved. All this in a matter of moments; it would take her far longer to slip them back on again, but she forced herself to be unconcerned.

The need for stream won out over propriety, and she stretched her legs past the hem of her dress and waved at herself with her toes, pink and white and in a row, then dangled them skimming, cutting patterns into the blessed waters beneath. And then slid her heels, and then her ankles, and then Alice sort of found herself standing balancing on a smooth chilly boulder, busily winding her skirts into puffy culottes round her knees, just above the water line, if only for a moment or two. It couldn't hurt to cool down in such weather, even if it was unseemly.

Alice splashed the now-cold-feeling water lightly into a mist and repinned her stray fringe locks. She really didn't look so wilted as she had thought, but then the waters were rather dark among the trees and it was difficult to tell. True, her lower half was sufficiently cooled at last, but the bounty of Peneus did not strike her to the core. Traipsing back to the bank nearby, Alice was nearly upon her hook-and-eyes but at the last moment reached for a strewnful of twigs, turned, and began throwing them each end over end as hard as she could. It didn't relieve the heat, but it did make her feel better about not being able to skip stones. There were two twigs left, and she bid them goodbye at the same time, then waited to see which passed post, which she designated as an oak tree, first. Had she won or had she lost the race?

_"Let him finish, Alice," her older sister admonished her. They were younger, much younger, and there was talk of a picnic. Alice longed for a picnic, she did not long for lengthy boat rides and even lengthier discourses of theological seminarians. Going out for the day was for enjoying the out-of-doors, which was by its own right meant to enjoy without so much talking, she thought. _

_"No, it's alright," quietly said the new tall young man who was seated at the bow, half in shade from the trees overhead. There was a slight curl to the edges of his hair, and his eyes were blue or grey, she could not tell. He spoke strangely half the time, and the other half with ease he knew not; it was when the young man thought someone was listening that his hesitation came through. "Do you want to play a game instead?"_

_"What sort of game?" What games could be played in a boat on the river Alice cared not; she would much rather hear a nice story but did not say so. _

_"Um," said the young man, who was looking up into the trees to think. The other Reverend, the older one, said from where he sat at oar,_

_"Doublet," as if they had been discussing it previously. _

_"What's Doublet?" asked one of her sisters. They were port and starboard, and Alice was seated in the middle. __She wanted to dip her hand into the water where it made a juicy slicing sound, but there she was, Alice, right in the middle. _

_"You take a word and turn it into another word. But you have to do it one letter at a time."_

_"Take CAT. Remove the A and put in an O. COT. Remove the C and add a D. Now it's DOT. Take the T and--"_

_"Look, there's the bridge!" The older Reverend guided the skiff to shore, and her sisters ran toward the churchyard, towing the hamper with the red checked blanket inside, but Alice clattered onto the wooden planked bridge, enjoying the sound of her heels against it. She climbed onto the lower rails to lean out and peer down into the rushing waters. The young man came over to her, and Alice lifted her head to see that he had two lengths of twig both about the size of her arm. He handed one to her, and held his out over the stream. _

_"On the count of three, we'll drop them both at the same time," he said slowly, once again conscious of the way his words tripped down the stairs and tumbled out of his mouth. He counted, and Alice heard a double splish below. "Here," he said, and then they went to the other side of the bridge. The two sticks appeared, one a length ahead of the other._

_"Yours came out first," he told her. "You won." _

_"Won what?" He thought a moment. _

_"What do you have in your pocket?" She fished about in the small square in her apron and found the tiny silver thimble she had been using in the morning. She put it gently into his cupped palm, and then he turned his hand over and looked very grave indeed as he spoke._

_"I beg your acceptance of this very elegant thimble, young Alice who has won the race," he said in his careful slow voice as he returned it with a small smile._

There was a quiet cough behind her.

Now, there is what Alice could have done, and what Alice did do, in response to this cough and the presence of someone else.

Spinning round in pure reaction, her brain was caught between two central lessons she had once been taught. The first was that a lady never shows her bare limb in public, for that is a cause of great humiliation and detriment to her feminine modesty and status. The other was that a lady's garments must not skirt the ground or besmirch the lady's appearance with mud or other spoiling elements of the natural world. This included several inches of water, which would ruin any fine fabric. She was stuck, uncertain which trumped which, and shrieked, trying to decide what was more important, working to cover the flesh but working to save the skirts but the bare legs and then the fabric--

But Alice with her skirts above her knees did not scream. She turned to find her perpetual companion there in the water, his trousers rolled up, watching her with a strange introspective expression. Alice took a few sloshy steps toward the Hatter and stood there, a bit surprised at how utterly unembarrassed she felt. The darker waters did help, though. He stared her right into the eyes in the slight distance and did not even give a flicker of a glance to the rest of her; there was no dress pulled past the point of modesty, there was no embarrassment. She had never realized how tall he was, almost as tall as the younger Reverend, but not the same at all. He was so strange, with all that white hair and a nose from a comedy, one that fit so perfectly it was unreal. Alice moved forward again, and reached out and with her fingers pushed on him, but he did not move, simply looked at her in quiet amusement.

"What are you doing?" She shrugged in response.

"Daydreaming, I suppose."

"I called you several times. You must have been very far away indeed."

"I was remembering something from a long time ago." He pulled a creamy yellow slip of paper from his waistcoat pocket and held it out to her.

"This came for you a bit ago." Alice took it but did not open it, simply looked at it. "Telegram from the Royal Offices."

"How do you know; did you read it?" she said this bluntly and he shook his head no.

"Always on that yellow paper, but never any cheerful news," he said, and went back to stand against the opposite side of a tree.

_Duchess urges private conference bring Hatter stop. _

_R.O._

She pulled on her stockings with a blank face, her toes numb from the chilled water.

"Feeling any better?" she heard him ask, and she stopped in the midst of a pinched finger between one of the pearl boot buttons. It would have been easier with the hook, but there was time for proper dress later.

"A bit," she said, "Is it usually this hot for so long?" He came out from around the tree, shoes restored just as she finished the last one.

"Do sunny days and Fridays not always perk you up?" She stared at him, and he shook his head suddenly to dismiss the thought. "Why, do I dare ask, do you ask?" He was furrowing his eyebrows at her now.

"Well, it just seems like summer should end someday, you know," said Alice, pulling a leaf attached to a low branch down before her eyes to inspect it. "Nothing's even got the slightest hint of red or yellow, when does Fall--" The Hatter suddenly grabbed the branch from her and let it loose and it reared back like a long whip, and there was a shower of pale yellow and orange flapping gently into the waters below.

"Now you've done it," he said, but he was not cross. The green in the leaves above had blended itself to a very slight yellow, and the kiss of red and orange along the fingertips of the leaves at the top had perhaps been there all along if she had cared to look past the shimmering waves of heat. "That's all it takes, one thin drop of thought in the stream and on it travels until it catches everyone around here and they'll all be wondering why their trees aren't red."

There, that was all. Autumn, rather bluntly. No fade in, no chilled morning in repose lending itself to thoughts of future changes. Here you are, Alice, just what you wanted. Right now.

"That's it? That's all you have to do to make the weather change around here?" The trees on the other side of the bank had gone into a soft shade between chartreuse and blood orange, quite nicely against the clear blue sky. All the white was gone out of what she could see on the horizon, and instead there was a pure gradient of cornflower.

"No, you have to _want_ it to be autumn. Lord, it's been summer here for ages, we've all been ignoring it so we could have a bit of holiday just a tetch longer, but _nooo_, we've got to have red on the trees. Well, come on," he said exaggerating irritation in a broad accent and ignoring her protestations of innocence, "Needs must go dress for court."

"You said you didn't read it," replied Alice with some petulance.

"I lied," he called over his shoulder easily. "Probably."

* * *

Alice was staring into the double mirror of her armoire, starched and curled and looking presentable. But the heavy thing in front of her was unlike other cabinets, for the doors did not swing out. Rather, one panel slid back behind the other. This was frustrating and confusing; she had never beheld such an inconvenient way to get at the stuff within, constantly having to slide them back and forth to get at opposite sides of the wardrobe. But when she pulled them both to their edges so that the mirrored doors reflected the whole room back at her, and stood with her nose against the split where the edges overlapped, the left side of her face seemed closer, and the right side seemed much farther away.

There were two Alices here, she thought, and neither of them wanted to see the Duchess. What progress had she made, what news did she have?

Nothing.

"Nothing, nothing, nothing," said the Hatter when they had reached the royal viewing room at last. She was looking at the windows and he was pacing the tile floor, arms upreached to the painted scenes on the ceilings, figures and forms she could not put together. "You clear out the tables in here and this is nothing but a gigantic room with a--look, she's got a gliding rocker chair up here, it's all covered in velvet! And bees! Embroidered bees all over the throne!" she heard him cry from the platform at the far end.

"Come down from there, you're going to get into trouble." She kept twisting her hands together; Alice sighing on the second stair to the royal riser and turning to look back through the gilded empty hall. It was so vaguely hazily opulent, but without all the beautiful courtiers it was really just a room with white plaster molding and tall windows.

"If I sit down, one could say this chair might just _rock me on the dais_," he said, and laughed so hard that he was wiping aside tears when she finally reached him. The hilarity didn't quite strike her, though.

"That's not even remotely funny," she said, thoroughly confused. Instantly the smile disappeared and he stared off into space for a moment.

"You're right, that is truly heinous." He even had the tenacity to look vaguely disgusted.

"There is nothing quite so fine as an autumn afternoon, is there?"

There was that calm voice, and then Alice turned as she was looking up, and the pictures in the ceiling rotated with her, deconstructing and unobscuring, becoming sotty people picnicking by upside-down rivermouths and liberally toasting their confused team of nearby horses. And then the white plaster wasn't quite white, but had lines of thin gold ribboning throughout, clear sunlight in wedges through the windows. She was standing at the double egg-blue doors, the Duchess, hands folded and hair twisted and looking expectant.

"I think not, Your Grace," said Alice.

"Tell us," said the woman in the gray dress stepping in measures cross the room, "Did you find summer's apex so dreadful as all that?"

"No, but change is inevitable... or rather, it should be. One expects it to be. I mean, in the normal course of things. That is, I--"

"It is nothing to be concerned of, we are sure, but certainly one must consider the citizens stranded at holiday with little to keep them there." Alice bit her lip and managed to stay quiet at this.

"In future send explicit details re urgent meeting, stop," said the Hatter in a calm monotone at Alice's elbow. The Duchess began a slow serene smile.

"Oh come, yellow paper isn't such a terrible augury," she said to him. "We thought it quite cheerful."

"Got the wind up," he mumbled, looking back at the plum-colored chair on the platform.

"We do hope we haven't worried you, dear Lady," she said this to Alice, "But the crown wonders whether your stay here has been necessarily fruitful toward a compelling end?"

"I don't quite take your meaning, Your Grace," Alice replied.

"_Now, what news on the Rialto?_" and she put on a thoughtfully concerned face for a moment. "Reports of more goings on, goings missing..." she trailed off and gestured. Alice blinked, feeling an impending sense of being shanghaied but pressing on. The Hatter had his hands in his pockets and was standing very still. She wished he were jumping about now, or spouting off non sequiturs.

"I've talked to loads of people, no one has seen anything, but there was--"

"Have you seen the Tweedles?" replied the monarch very lightly, very delicately, looking carefully up into the ceiling. There was this awful pause, and Alice seized on it.

"Well, I--"

"Hmm," said the Duchess in something of nonchalance, "That is far too bad, but at least you spoke with them before they went and gone; what did they say?"

"Went, went and gone?" said Alice after a bit. She felt very far away, as if she were in the picnic scene overhead watching the anticlockwise swirl in the ash blonde royal hair below. The woman's eye was on her, calculated to a point and finding Alice vastly short of early prognostications. She was a little teapot, short and stout and not measuring up. The woman was bored with batting at Alice's nonanswers, and Alice could tell their conference was closing in short order and with little to show and no recourse. Duchess moved and spoke mildly to the Hatter.

"The next time you decide to come around for our choice wingdings, do try to remember you are under oath to the crown. We were disappointed enough in your choice of raiment, but we shall not be sorry if you must be stricken from the roster next time. Livestock, though terribly amusing," she said as she turned and did not look over her shoulder. "Are not eligible for prizes."

They were both silent, and Alice pushed her thumb very hard between her eyebrows and squeezed her lids shut.

"Do find something helpful next time," said the Duchess to her, ambling toward the door. "It is highly suspect that you come here so experienced and yet so empty-handed. Something useful is all we ask." Alice heard her gently echoing down the hallway through the open doors. "Something profitable, productive, rewarding, constructive. Worthwhile, perhaps?" And she had quit the room entirely.

* * *

It was a fine Saturday for sailing. The schooner sat moored midst the southern breeze pushing white puffy clouds, blameless in their enormity, around the sky, rearranging them as seen fit, moving the furniture in early autumn. The Hatter was standing at the bow, one hand behind him and the other in the buttonfold of his longcoat, surveying carefully his pale blue eye over the open skies and distant landscape before them. There were endless journeys to be taken, choices to be made, dice to be rolled.

Lessons to be learned.

"Yes," said the Hatter, sounding affirmation over the roofs of the world. He took a bracing length of air, and with confidence that time was beside them, removed a brass monocular from his breast pocket, and took a good long _look_ at the future.

"Persimmon will do," he continued to the Hare, who was digging with his hind legs sticking out of the long tube, kicking at the air as he reached further inwards. Alice was seated on the box below, trying to read a book with the pages all flapping about entitled _Edwin and Morcar: Earls of Mercia and Northumbria _while holding a bell-shaped fringe parasol in her other was a terribly dry book, and she was paying far more attention to the man in the large hat than she was to the fact that she had lost her place several times over. She had been feeling dull and gray, and he had forced her out of doors with many a push and shove into the open air and the weather she had managed to conjure with a firing of the synapses.

"Where exactly are you trying to go?" she said, rising and shielding her eyes from the sunlight with one hand. He passed her the monocular and pointed far below.

"You see that little cross catch?" he called out over the breeze. Alice murmured her assent, glass to the eye. "Good smack thirty degrees hooking to the left should take it out--" and here he grabbed her hand and raised it up high to tell where the wind came, for his hands were ever gloved, "--accounting for old Notus here." Alice lowered the monocular and looked out, merely appraising. The Hatter gave her a long sideways look, and she returned favor.

There was something to be said for what he was planning to do, and Alice had to admit that it was more scintillating, more tantalizing than the book. She looked out across the landscape and considered it, what he was going to do, for the first time really.

The ship creaked in the wind, our three pro tem miscreants stumbling slightly. They would have to hurry; ships fallen from the heavens above straight into the roofs of charity hospitals in the middle of capital cities may well be said by legend to have been there since "before elevenses as far as the Hatter knew," but how long this one would stand up was at present questionable. Alice had been assured before boarding that _their_ engagement was far more pressing than "those ruddy geriatrics who could use a shock to the life system any-thumping-how" if the boat crushed the hospital below.

"Do you have anything to say about this?" cried the Hare, coming up for air out of the bag with the favorite to win in hand, upon which the Hatter pounced and began swinging back and forth eagerly in elastic arcs. The rabbit did not seem terribly concerned or pleased with their choice of afternoon activity one way or the other. She recalled strongly the lofty look in the Duchess's eye, and Alice rolled the dice and folded her hands demurely.

"Not at all," said Alice in a superiorly airy voice over the creak of the ship. "It is a fine day to be out taking the air," and she and the Hatter both looked quite pleased with each other. The man with the white hair gave the large wooden golf club a spin in his palm a few times, dropped the ball onto the tile of snaggy sod they'd lifted in haste from an unsuspecting lawn, wound, and drove, the silver _slisk_ of air punctuating their smugness, full stop. For a moment they were just quiet; the sound of the targeted glass window exploding with such a bang did not reach them, and Alice pursed her lips to prevent a smile forming.

"Oh, that's a clean shot, that is," said the Hare.

"Hell's bells," said the disappointed Hatter.

"No, it's a rather jagged pattern," said Alice, looking back into the monocular for accuracy. "Yes, quite nicely—devastated half a good set of stained glass, and I think it smashed the leadpanes. Duchess won't be happy that you broke a royal window, sir," she told the Hatter with affected regret.

"Oh, I say, capital," said the Hatter by way of pleased embarrassment at his fine accomplishment, the Hare shaking his hand as though he had won the Open. "Would you like to have a go? There's a nice big circular window you could put one through_."_

Alice took the club into her own hands, handed off the folded parasol to the Hare, and the Hatter tipped hat and set up another white globe. The Duchess could have her machinations, but the open air, the breeze, and a leap at well-mannered malfeasance was for Alice.

After all, a pendulum swings both ways.


	10. Chapter 10

The Hatter is remembering Richard Crashaw's translation of Catullus 5. This is the untranslated line, from Catullus 7: "So many kisses are enough and more than enough for mad Catullus to kiss you..."  
Lewis Carroll and Disney need some love.  
Brianna and Rain started all this—I sometimes feel I should apologize to them for appropriating their characters in this fashion, but I love them and I'm so glad they are inspirations each in their own way.  
And Tell Me Lies on deviantArt, whose art has the influential sway of a moon, and whose friendship is truly worth having. She puts up with my pretentious idiocy and still draws pictures for me anyway. I love her.  
But most of all everyone who reads, and everyone who reviews. I go back and read what people write very carefully, and even if I don't always respond, it perks me up on a rainy day to know that somebody likes this. :)

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Part of being sane is being a little bit crazy.

Janet Long

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..._ as contextually, the beast had no known natural environment, nor do Nightmare Anthropologists have the benefit of understanding the horrific monster's motivations, as no one had come close to staring into the gaping maw of the stomach-churning double fangs and blood-red eyesockets, within which the black seas of infinity eructed gray anticlockwise cyclones of abject misery, that is until came a young man with a destructive instrument we colloquially know as a--_

Alice set the book down again with a sigh. She had read the same story over and over, and every book went back to the poem about the boy sho slew the Jabberwock, snicker-snack. There was an undetailed relief in the general consensus that the damnable thing was long dead, and yet she could not get off the subject. Every geographic tome, every single volume of the _History of the Wonderland and a Taxonomical Survey Thingummy_ mentioned it, but never by name, only mythical metaphor. A writhing, creeping horror. The gray leathered shriek of death assured. The ichor-dripping lurker, the fever-dream weirding expelled from the blackness of beginning. It was a bit overdramatic, really. She picked up another book from the stack and opened it to the middle.

_And in the twenty-seventh year of the reign of His Imperial Highness The Argot, He did split the northern plains from the southern capital, exclaiming upon the announcement of His proclamation, "Well, 'pon my Sam, it's a bit hard! I can't go a day without you people whingin' at me over this or that, so we'll just split the whole bloody thing, right, and--"_

Alice made a noise rife with exasperation and zipped her thumb through the remaining pages before tossing it carelessly between a silver cow-shaped creamer and a stack of cruller_. _There was very little to be had in the way of decent information that she could glean; her aim was to have a better understanding of this place, but there seemed to be blockades almost purposely put up at every turn of her path. She had been in the Hare's library again searching through the books, which had irritated him, at least according to the way his ears had begun to crease in the middle. He was somewhere off in the dense grass along the shady treeline, talking to the dragonflies that were apparently preparing for an autumn holiday to sunnier climes.

On the other hand, the Hatter was once again sitting with his oversized green oxfords propped up amongst the china, implausibly leaning into the back two legs of the large red wingback chair at the head of the tea table. He had a carriage clock in one hand, a brass screwdriver with a brushed handle in the other, and a host of cogs, gears, springs, screws, and a small spinny looking thing on the table.

"What are you doing?" said Alice out of boredom. He looked up at her momentarily.

"I have a deuce of a time understanding this impertinent line of questioning you engage in at times, you know," he said not unkindly. "What are _you_ doing, is the better question, I am sure."

"Trying to figure out this forest business," said Alice. "All these books, and none of them have anything reliable to say."

"About what?" he said vaguely, and slipping his legs down, bumped the chair onto the grass and began cramming bits of brass hardware back into the clockbox. She breathed in deeply and was about to say it, when the Hatter held up a gloved finger without looking at her. "Don't say it," he warned.

"Why not? It's dead; at least these... thirty books think so. The poem certainly lends credence."

"Ah, yes. 'Tum-tum, tum-tum, tum-tumty-tum, I slew him, tum-tum tum!' Something like that." He finished screwing the back onto the clock before appraising it from different angles.

"Was it broken?"

"It was trying to run backwards—Father Time must have got wind of your hanging about here all the time and decided your traitorous nature was too much. It should run, at least forwards, now. I fixed it so it does both, too."

"Hmm?"

"It was all tock-tock-tock and no tick-tick-tick, so it should have more ticks than tocks now, but they'll never be even, you know, it simply doesn't want to do that, it's not in its nature." He pushed the clock toward her and Alice set it next to her butter knife to remember to take it home again sometime. Having nothing amusing before him, the Hatter set about nosing through the books she had stacked upon the table. He found a small novel or hornbook crammed between the cover and endpage of a larger textbook and began to read aloud from the thin folio.

"_...da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum..._" It sounded suspiciously like a Latin grammarian's exercises in declension, and Alice sat listening to the low hum of his mouth as the words sank back into an indecipherable buzz. When he was finished, he looked up over the book.

"What is that?"

"Poetry."

"Well, what does it say?"

"What do you mean, 'what does it say?'"

"It's been an awfully long while since I've studied Latin," she said hintingly. He tilted back his chin to look up into the sky, and there was a slight pause. The chair springs creaked beneath him, settling, and she fiddled with the cow-creamer, turning it to face a teapot painted like a field of poppies so it would have something nice to look at. Finally he spoke.

"There's a corking good translation, and if I remember correctly, that one part goes--

_Then let amorous kisses dwell _  
_On our lips, begin to tell _  
_A Thousand, and a Hundred, score _  
_An Hundred, and a Thousand more, _  
_Till another Thousand smother _  
_That, and that wipe off another..._

I can never quite keep the numbers straight—those old counting styles positively... bruise the grey matter." He dropped his gaze and flipped the pages in his hands quietly.

Alice did not speak, but stared at the horns on the cow-creamer and reached for the geographical treatise again. She would return it to the library and leave the room aside for another day. The sun was almost at the tops of the trees, and she had an appointment to keep. As she reached the house, she heard the Hatter say,  
"..._tam te basia multa basiare uesano satis et super Catullo est_..."

It didn't help that the paintings on the wall across from where she was sitting on the chintz fainting couch—the arts hung four in a row above an oddly-placed green baize door—seemed to be as fascinated with her as she with them. Alice had tried at first to simply appreciate the beauty of the bold, unhesitant lines in the female forms, but had begun to realize after careful study that the women therein were smiling. At her. Or at least three of them were, which was to be expected. Spring, Summer, and Autumn all had pretty red lips curved into pursed variations: pleased, sweet, and sly. Winter, who had her thin cloak-hood pulled near her face, simply stared with her pellucid blue eyes, tentatively reaching for a cold knuckled twig in the barren white landscape.  
If they were trying to be reassuring, the effect was nil, for Alice had a cold numb feeling along the ankles where her boots met her hose, and a fearful tingling upon her fingertips.

There had been another yellow telegram, and as she sat in the long unending palace hall, Alice tried to push guilty thoughts out of her mind. If the Duchess knew that her hand had dipped into the ruination of stained glass, Alice was prepared in her mind to throw the chips on the table and lie. The trouble was that she was rather bad at it. The admission stung a bit. Her eyes returned to the art at hand, and she came up and wandered near.  
Spring in her bounty was crowned in the usual sense with a pretty well-stuffed halo of tender green and pink things, stepping lightly and delicately across the canvas to inspect a shy little bud poking up out of the melting snow. Her eyes were filled with sky and leaf and every good new thing, and she gestured to her viewer with a thin line Alice guessed to be a pencil. She squinted; there was a small cozy bundle wrapped in a gauzy fabric at Spring's breast that could have been the form of a child—her smile well and proud with the outcome of things.

Alice turned her head this way and that, but no servants came, and so she moved on to a closer inspection of Summer, whose legs dipped low over a bank to skim the waters of a dark rippling brook. If Spring had the ring of flowers, Summer was triumphant with glistening red poppies round her brow, bright and shiny above her dark curls. Summer was sweet against the fair clear skies, her colors brighter in the midday sun. High in one hand she held a ceramic pot of color; with the other she bent to paint stripes on the lines of tulips bobbing toward her, basking in her artistic glory.

And then of course there was Autumn, with all the blazing colors of the height of ripeness. She was ready to be picked, her body bent into and against gravity in a twirling dance but clear and bright and flaming red and orange, her movements captured in a single moment but she was smiling, for nothing could stop her. On her outstretched finger was balanced a brown bird with its eyes closed. Autumn practically burst grinning at Alice, and Alice had the distinct feeling that Autumn in her turn knew something she didn't, some magnitude of wisdom about life that Alice hadn't quite found yet.

Last on the end was Winter, and not much of her but frosty clear February eyes, half a pale cheek, and a faintly pink mouth. Her icy pale cloak was a thin whisper, bare protection against Boreas's anger, and as Alice stepped just a bit closer, she could see that the white was not ice and snow, but pages, all as if torn from a book—all tumbling down, and she was slipping into them and with them and against them; she wasn't grasping for a twig, she was pointing at something.  
There were footsteps, and then Alice turned to see a junior valet in claret velvet at her shoulder.

Alice did not know what to think of the Duchess. It was not that the woman was unfeeling, or uncaring, or sinister in any ominous fashion. It was not so much an presence of absence in the Duchess, but the absence of presence. Alice could not complain here—for she had had ill-advised relationships with aristocrats in these parts before—but the woman was aloof, lacking in the distinctly colorful riotous nature of every other denizen of these parts, and this gave her pause and a good reason to view the woman's manners with a more distinct analysis than what was usually warranted. And the woman had in turn gazed deeply at the twin pools in Alice's open face and seen, perhaps, something she had not yet articulated to the girl. At any rate, the sensation of a singular fear eclipsed the blue in Alice's eyes, and she wondered what retributive counterpoint the Duchess might present as to the round of golfing that had been rather pointedly asserted the week before.

The woman was sitting at an ornate pier table with gold leafed lion's paws shining at the base, busied hands working over its surface.

"You may approach," said the Duchess rather breezily. She did not look up, and Alice was glad, for she had been thinking of the hole in the stained glass through the monocular's eye and her cheeks had tightened in guilt. Guilt, and the embodiment of the Crown spoke with a light tone. The girl concentrated her gaze on the slim signet ring round the woman's finger. Alice wondered what thoughts circulated in the Duchess's head; what series of girls and then women she had once been comprised of.

The Duchess was making excellent use of her precious royal time, matching and aligning the last few pieces of a dark... Alice turned her head to view the object on the table cursorily. It was a jigsaw puzzle. There were a few disjointed gaps toward the middle of the thing, which seemed to be a painted scene of a gentleman and a lady standing rather near one another.

"Your Grace wished to see me?" said Alice after a moment.

"Yes..." was the murmured reply. Alice waited, but the Duchess seemed more intent on the scene at hand. After a moment, the Duchess lifted her graceful head to stare into Alice's eyes. "Come sit with us on the bench," she said quietly. There was a soft watery slick swish of skirts, and Alice tried very hard not to stare at the monarch's profile and to keep her back straight. She had been taught well, but then, she was Alice and she could not help that in the least, and so it took a great deal of restraint not to ask the Duchess what on earth she could possibly want.

"This is going rather well," said the Duchess in her opening remark, clicking two pieces together and giving them a gently satisfied look. Alice was imagining what her vantage point would be from a set of stocks in the city square—very probably of her white stockings, what with her head locked down. Perhaps everyone in the capital would throw flowers at her instead of moulded endives or egg grease.

"Your Grace?" Alice said when she remembered to answer. The older woman turned very slowly to face her on the bench, rotating with ease like a gray swan on a glassy pond.

"This is very important," she said slowly. "I want you to pay attention." Alice searched the woman's serious face for a hint of what was to come, but the Duchess had the expression of someone who has already laid out the key element. "The last tessellating pieces are in here somewhere," she added by way of vague addition.

_Oh_. Alice stared at the handful of remaining shapes and took her shoulders down from their high-backed arches. That was what the woman called her all the way to the palace for; help with a jigsaw puzzle? A grown woman, and a royal no less? Surely there was more to palace life than puzzles and games, and yet it was a perfectly conceivable notion in a place like this. Alice turned and slipped the last odd ones together, ran her fingers across the board, for there was one more hole, and could not find the completion check. The Duchess made a strange gesture and produced the last from within her palm. Alice received it from her silently, snapped the final chip and saw the whole picture.

The couple therein were standing on two sides of an iron gate, reluctant to step away, Alice thought, judging their expressions. He was leaning in close at the posts to gaze at the lady openly; she coyly raising her other hand to finger at a single twist of hair near her nape, shy and sweet and full of a longing the girl did not even realize. The space Alice had completed was now the gentleman's ungloved hand reaching through the gate for the lady's delicate fingers, both quietly reveling in the thrill, the touch of the other. He had a firm, but somehow propitious grip on her hand—for the peek of her inner forearm from within the lady's delicately laced sleeve merely suggested, nothing more.

She framed them loosely between her hands, studying their apparel, so dark and normal, not at all like what people got away with round these parts. Bright bold clashing colors; even her gifted hat was a study in opposites. Alice thought of that black and white picture hat nestled yet within the gently placed papers, sitting in the blue and cream striped round box on the top shelf of the cupboard alongside the kitchen door, where she had stowed it before. She wondered vaguely if the Hatter were upset that his gift was hid out of the sunlight; she certainly did not mean to set it to waste, only to keep it hidden so it would not spoil.

Coming through the corridor past that particular cupboard early one morning, Alice had been tying the black ribbon through her hair and was just stopped before the hall mirror to inspect herself when she heard a noise. Now, noises do not usually bother people who live in the middle of strange forests full of odd creatures, but this was a... sort of splashy-splashy sound, and not a foresty-foresty sound, and so Alice turned her ear out and listened carefully. The floorboards creaked slightly under her, there was a windchime somewhere in the distance, but--

There it was again, and closer this time. She turned very slowly and began to place her feet carefully one in front of the other, just leaning into the weight to pad silently around the corner. She listened, and the splashy-splashy sound became a splooshy-splooshy one. There was a low voice muttering, and the whites of Alice's eyes suddenly grew, and then disappeared altogether as she turned and glared with full force at the bathroom door, which felt this vitriol was entirely undeserved but remained stoic regardless.

She was going to hurt him somehow. She did not quite have a plan formulated, but Alice knew very well that he was going to wind up with bruises and also possibly a black eye, depending on how much bathwater he had gotten on the floor. She imagined the tub filled past the drainhole, plugged with the ribbon from her dressing gown—_oh God, the dressing gown_. Had he stretched it out? Was the Japanese patterned silk shaped like a gorilla now? She cringed deeply and did not want to think of the the poor thing's fate, cloaking a man who was twice her size and oh, she didn't want to think about it. Alice had moved past the black eye and was striding meaningfully in her mind toward something along the lines of repeated slaps to the face. She clcnched her fists, closed her eyes, and threw open the door.

"_Just what do you think you're_--"

There was a pregnant pause, and Alice realized through her cautious squint that she had been rather premature regarding the situation at hand. There was no one reclining in her bath, having poured out all her colored salts to leave a crusted rainbow on the porcelain. There was no dressing gown collecting waterspots on the floor, and certainly no indecorous nudity. Unless one counted rolled up shirtsleeves as indecent.

The Hatter was not paying attention to Alice in her frozen state of effigy. Instead, he was rather smoothly allowing her to recover, holding up a small yellow rubber thing in the shape of a smiling duck to his ear, nodding and listening carefully to its silent peroration as he stared up into the ceiling.

"_Ohhh, Monsieur Canard, tu as beaucoup de cadeaux!"_ he exclaimed half-chidingly to the tiny fowl before setting it gently back on the water in the clawfoot bathtub. "Hello," he said cheerfully to the Alice standing in the doorway from where he was sitting with his elbows folded on the long edge. She tilted her head to the side and let her mouth hang open very ungracefully, trying to think of something to say. "Your duck says he doesn't get enough exercise. You really ought to keep him out in the open and not in that cupboard. It's too dark; ducks like water. He has a lot of opinions about that."

"Does he, now?" she said in a strain.

"He does miss you, you know," he said in genuine tones, water dripping from his sopped gloves.

"That's better, don't you think?" The monarch had tilted her chin slightly to look at Alice, a gently approving sort of look about here. Alice bit back the amused smile that had come over her, came out of the fog of recollection and smoothed her thumb over the last piece featuring the two hands to press the chipboard securely.

"Yes, Your Grace."

"You may go," replied the older one, "Do have a nice afternoon, dear."

Alice rose carefully, her back straight and her steps smooth and small, and when she got to the door again, the Duchess said,

"Oh, you might find the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon. You do remember where they bivouac, yes? On the shore."

"Yes, Your Grace," said Alice, and quit the room.

As she trod down the endless hall lined with gilt-edged portraits, Alice felt as if her feet were moving through invisible molasses. Any moment, the Duchess would send guards after her in arrest, to off her head or... whatever it was the Duchess usually ordered as punishment. But then Alice reached the green baize door, and looking up at Winter's secretive gesture, she turned to follow the girl's gaze and saw the portrait just over the couch she had sat upon earlier. There was a rendition of the Duchess, gray silk, signet ring, aloof inscrutable gaze and all. Had she seen it before? Had it even been there?

"These places are always like that, aren't they?" said Alice to the Four Seasons.

And the fear vacated her. Whether the picture was meant to frighten or warn her off, Alice did not feel any chilling effects. She smiled and wondered whether the Duchess had ever visited half the rooms in the palace at any time during her reignal residency.

Back at the tea table, she found Messrs. Hatter and Hare with their heads together over something clearly fascinating—only the key point was that it was clear, for it was a great anomaly, this thing sitting on the table. The Hatter had moved the large red wingback chair halfway down the runnerboard and was staring into the clear glass with a look somewhere between suspicion and pending wild absurd joy, his pale blue eye magnified through the water within.

It was a glass teapot, and they were staring at some kind of brown stone that was inside of it. "What on earth is _that_?" said Alice approaching the table. The books were gone, and she rightly suspected that no rabbit had moved them.

"_Tea,_" said the March Hare in a tone as though he were both curious and surprised by this. "How is that tea, it's not--"

"_Shhh!_" cried the Hatter, "It's starting!"Alice approached and put her nose next to the pot in question, the three of them breathing on the already steamed up cylinder. The stone was no stone, for it had begun to blossom and show pink and yellow and white spiked petals, and the water was slowly turning the Hatter's blue eyes slightly green as the tannins stained the water a slow amber.

"Ohhhh," said the Hare after the requisite three minutes had passed and there was a large flower undulating gently under the tea.

In moments, there were three distinct smacking sounds as they collectively tasted the roofs of their mouths, and there were three distinct reactions. Alice politely set her cup down, folded her hands, and kept her face smooth and neutral, trying to think of something vague to say. The Hare stared into his, looking deeply worried. The Hatter, meanwhile, was resting his chin on his open palm as he lifted the glass teapot in the air, held it out wide over the grass, and poured out every last drop, smiling blithely at Alice as he did so. She felt much better after that, and they each drank three cups of oolong to rid themselves of the taste.

But the oolong's cleansing did not last long.

"What dormouse?"

"We had a dormouse?"

"How do you even spell that?"

"What's a dormouse?" The two before her spoke all this in an overlap.

"Y-y-e-es, you rather hated him, I think. As I recall, you tried stuffing him into a teapot--"

"_Good Lord!_" The Hare looked dramatically offended, clutching a checkerboard patterned pot to his tiny rabbit bosom in outraged protection. The Hatter meanwhile was trying out what he apparently believed to be a contemplative expression, but instead looking as though he were trying to outstare his own slyly raised eyebrow.

"A _dormouse_," he said carefully.

"A dormouse," replied Alice with measure. "He was very sleepy and kept dozing off and then waking, only to sing made-up verses of nursery rhymes. Whatever happene--"

"Wait wait wait wait wait," said the Hare unnecessarily. "You're telling me that we had, in our company, when you visited as a smaller version of yourself, a _talking mouse_?" Alice nodded in earnest. "A _talking,_" said the Hare very loudly with great disbelief, _"mouse!_"

"A talking mouse," said the Hatter.

"A talking! mouse! A talking animal! An animal that talks!" said the talking rabbit who was wearing a corduroy jacket and bow tie. "To think!" cried the March Hare, and he held up his paws in exasperated gesture before bouncing off into the house, stringing together loud opinions about fertile imaginations. The Hatter turned to look at Alice with a perfectly straight face.

"I do remember the little chap—had a whole house in one of the teapots, a tiny little kitchen and a roomful of miniature ivory reproductions. Went off after we were experimenting with a particularly potent and not entirely potable blend of French tea. Accidentally took a hard pull of the concentrate stuff—bit sludgy like molasses, but he was rather swimming in it--his fur rose on end, and the old bean took an extended sojourn to southern parts. Probably still out there somewhere," he said with a bit of nostalgia, gazing off into the distance, "Running about like a greased weasel."

"I find it all very strange, of course, but in a way I wonder at the crown's surprise," Alice was saying later. "She told me to go and find the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon as if she knew something had gone wrong, but why send me? If someone had gone missing, what am I to do about it?"

"Hmm," said the Hatter, worrying the straightline pipe between his teeth and letting loose a volley of iridescent spheres into the forest, "I think you better had go and see them, you know. They are rather close, and I do wonder if that thing in the forest stays in the forest."

"They are like the Tweedles," said Alice with a sigh. She could not shake the guilt.

"Well, I'm certainly glad to not be a part of all this nonsense," said the Hare as he returned.

"You aren't afraid?" He shook his head. "Why not?"

"I'm off on holiday in a few weeks."

"But summer is over," said Alice, "No one holidays in autumn."

"It's not so much a holiday," said the Hatter, chiding. "Go on, confess." This was directed at the peevish looking rabbit.

"I'm going to a probate," he said finally.

"Rabbits have wills?" Alice was of course astonished, but managed to check most of the tone in her voice.

"Well, the family I come from does," he remarked, reaching for a petit four so far across the table that his large foot began to thump in the chair.

"Are you getting an inheritance?" she asked, which would have been insulting directed at anyone else, but she felt perhaps he might not mind. And true to form, he did not.

"Yes, some uncle or something, something about family lineage, something else about money or a house or lead warren or I don't know what all." Alice saw the opening he had created, and looked at the Hatter, who seemed to be only half-listening. She was amazed; did he not see it, and what with his history of doing it? She looked back at the Hare, who was eyeing the petit fours again, and moved her voice into an innocent tone.

"So, if you turned out to be the first taker," she said, proceeding slowly, "That would make you the--" and here Alice paused so that they both looked up at her in anticipation, and kept her face perfectly straight. "_Hare apparent_."

There was a thump so loud onto the table that the teapots jumped and began to scatter. The Hatter had slammed down his teacup with the force of one who slams down a victoriously empty beer stein, and he stared at her, the whites of his eyes visible. She felt quite satisfied at his reaction.

"Hell's bells," said the Hare in amazement finally. "She's doing it too, she's got the brain fever!"

"No," said the Hatter in a voice of deep and pure awe that dropped into a harsh whisper. "She's making puns." And then Alice knew by his very pleased grin that they were great friends indeed.


	11. Chapter 11

Carroll and Disney get credit for starting all this.

Brianna and Rain crafted the characters we know and love.

Tell Me Lies I tell the story's secrets to, and she hides them in her drawings and makes them real.

If you'd like a translation of the singing, it's the Barcarolle from Les Contes D'Hoffmann. Also some reference to Walt Whitman later on.

In case you're wondering, yes, this chapter is longer—it's 12 pages instead of the usual 8. This isn't an overall trend, however—this is me working through spring break to make things happen, because I can virtually guarantee there won't be another chapter until late May.

I hope you liked it, and thanks for reading!

* * *

Real loss only occurs when you lose something that you love more than yourself.

Anonymous

Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness, and the serious look may be the sober veil that covers a divine peace and joy.

Edward Chapin

Alice was hesitating in the hours afterward, for she did not want to go walk along sandy beaches and try to find the pair of creatures both the Duchess and now the Hatter had recommended to her. Generous suggestions, yes, but she was more inclined to hover over the teapots and arrange them by color. It wasn't working; they became very insulted by the implications and at first snottily rearranged themselves, then began to play games with her and elude her grasp. The cow-creamer began to moo at her in outrage when she picked it up, but Alice shushed it and it became content to simply dollop cream into her cup. She was setting it aside and considering sneaking back into the Hare's library when out came the gregarious host himself bearing a large silver domed platter about three times his own size, wobbling and weaving about like a drunk porter.

"Ah, you're still here! You can help us with this!"

"What is that." The Hatter was looking up from his crossword puzzle in a perfectly serious fashion.

"You never do that, why are you doing that?" The Hare stopped, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and moved the platter around, trying to put the Hatter into his eye's view.

"What do you mean? What are you suggesting?"

"I'm suggesting that you never do that. Why are you doing that now?"

"Because I felt like it, that's why."

"Well, it didn't work the last time."

"That's your opinion!" cried the Hare, lifting the large thing onto the table dangerously. Alice suddenly did not quite feel like sticking this one out, as it were.

"You know, I really shouldn't stay," said Alice, twisting her hands together lightly and wondering if they could actually hear her over their ructions, "I rather had it in mind to go and, um, see the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon after all. I don't know if perhaps you remember, but there seems to be a rash of creatures disappearing, I do owe the Duchess a service of duty--" she pointed out with some irony.

"No, you must come and stay," said the Hare, who was glaring at the Hatter, "There's supper."

"Supper," said Alice, now with disbelief.

"Sup-per," said the Hatter through his bubbling pipe, who was back at the crossword puzzles and apparently felt this would be cemented with his input.

"What sort of supper," Alice's voice came out in something like unimpressed monotone. The Hare lifted the silver dome from the platter, and when the steam cleared she could see a large cut of meat. It was a dark dusty rose color with a pleasant lemon flavor in the essence.

"Salmon?" she asked, desperately hoping not, for it would have been dreadfully overcooked if it were.

"Red herring," said the Hare, standing on the table and slicing into it with a tong fork. "You see, we are not completely given over to lushy imbibement of ceylon--" There was a very rude and loud slurping noise, and both the girl and the rabbit who were now leaning over the long fish slowly looked down the table at the man with a pipe at one side of his mouth and holding a seashell shaped tea cup at the other. He paused in the midst of this to look back and forth between them both before speaking defensively.

"_Wha'?!_" he managed to say with everything between his lips.

"_Anyway_," said the Hare in vicious italics, "There is food other than what's on the tea service, and you're welcome to it if you like."

As Alice let the boxgate close behind her, she hoped that she had uttered enough polite niceties to the Hare, promising to have supper another time. She did not like to stand between two sides of an argument, and she had a mind to avoid confrontations with her only benefactors in this whole particular world. She began to listen to the stepping sound her boots made, and wondered where along the seashore she could find the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon.

But where are you going, dear reader? Do not follow Alice down that bricked path. Let her skirts turn the corner and all the knowledge and thoughts and questions she houses, suspended invisibly over her head, trail behind and then catch up like a cluster of errant balloons. Let us ask that question we have not asked before: what do Hatters and Hares do while Alices are gone off exploring and investigating?

The Hare was still standing on the table, stretched up, watching to see if she had gone.

"Finally got her off her tail," he said. "Dear girl, she needed a push. It's a hard lot, being sent all over and back like that."

"It was a good ploy," said the Hatter reassuringly in a distracted voice, taking a sip of darjeeling.

"We do what we must because we can," said the Hare sagely, and raised a cup before they nodded a toast. "What shall we do with _that_?" he asked, poking at the red herring and looking faintly disgusted.

"Who knows; perhaps it'll grow legs and walk away if we leave it here long enough."

"Why did she need to go see the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, exactly?" said the Hare after a pause.

"Duchess," said the Hatter with his pen between his teeth. The spigot on his pipe was clogged again, and he had stuck a hatpin inside of it to clear it out.

"Batty old harridan," said the Hare in a safe low voice, looking around and speaking into his teacup.

"Now, now," said the Hatter. "Best she did _something_." But the Hare misunderstood who he meant.

"Agreed; sitting around here can't be that exciting, a pair of cavalier bachelors for company. She needs friends!" he cried suddenly, pounding his tiny fist into the table and waking up the sugar bowl. "Take her to a ball or something," he commanded.

"Certainly," said the Hatter, "The answer to every question, and the solution to every equation." The Hare was satisfied, but the Hatter gave him a sidelong look of sardonicism. And they paused, sitting in easy company, for they were old friends indeed. The Hatter retamped his pipe, and a rush of fresh bubbles soon crossed into the trees.

"Nine-letter word for a sudden arresting memory," murmured the Hatter, biting his lip and squinting at the paper.

"Flashback," said the March Hare helpfully. The Hatter formed the _f_ in the square box before he looked out across the lawn in the shaping dusk.

"_No, it isn't," said the Hatter._

"_Yes, it is," said the Hare._

"_No, it isn't."_

"_Whozwhatsit?" said the Dormouse. _

"_Oh, shut up!" said the Hare crossly, for he had misheard the Dormouse and thought he was in league with the Hatter on this particular point._

"_No, I'm telling you: it's a lyrebird, not a mockingbird, and it has got to go. It's making this awful racket in broad midday, and it's interrupting everything I'm trying to--" He stopped and had a curious and distant look upon his face, and the Hare turned to see what the Hatter was looking at. _

"_What on earth is that!" cried the March Hare, for he had never seen a creature like this one before and thought it quite a remarkable looking thing._

"_It's a girl," said the Hatter, who sounded very astonished._

"_A what?!" _

"_A _girl_, a young girl." He took the pipe out of his mouth politely and leaned forward to get a better look at her. The Hatter did know an awfully good deal about life, but even he was surprised to see the small female in a blue frock and white apron with long yellow hair standing in the archway looking back at them curiously in her serious oval face. And rightfully so, for girls were rare in these parts._

"_Well, what on earth is it doing here? We're talking about birds, there's no room for this sort of thing, doesn't it know that?" said the Hare rather rudely. Regardless of his tone, the girl stepped forward and did not take her eyes off them. But it was a strange look, as though they were sitting in different seats, or were at different distances across the table._

"_There's plenty of room!" she said haughtily, and swept into one of the chairs at the far end of the table. The two of them gave each other a very long blank look—for the Dormouse had fallen asleep again—and both came up short for answers._

"_This isn't one of your inventions, is it?" said the Hare in a monotone which suggested previous and possibly infamous incidents regarding said inventions._

"_Of course not, I couldn't make anything that looked like that."_

"_Well, I hope it doesn't spend all its time whinging at us about wanting something to eat--"_

"_There _isn't_ any wine," said the girl suddenly and indignantly. _

"_I didn't say there was," said the Hare, much offended. "Besides, it's a bit early for that. It better have brought some, sitting down so pert like that." He stood on his chair and gave her a careful study, but finding no bottle of vintner's mark, sat back, feeling disappointed as well as annoyed._

"_I didn't know it was _your _table," said the girl. "It's laid for a great many more than three." She was staying near the far end of the table, sometimes with that distant gaze, and sometimes with the pointblank stare of the savant child. It was a bit unnerving, and neither of them offered her any tea. The Hatter was looking at the girl curiously before deciding on a proper course of action. A non sequitur for a non sequitur._

"_Your hair wants cutting," he said to her directly, and she turned and looked straight at him where he was as if for the first time before uttering in a rather snooty voice,_

"_You should learn not to make personal remarks; it's very rude." _

"_Opinionated little thing!" said the Hare, nearly choking on his tea. "How old is it?"_

"_She, not it," said the Hatter. "She can't be more than seven or eight." _

"_That's ancient!"_

"_No, she's quite young, not even through school yet."_

"_Well, that's no surprise; is she an idiot or something?"_

"_No; I don't think she understands quite what we're saying," said the Hatter, regarding the girl calculatingly, "Or perhaps she's having a different conversation than we are. Sometimes that happens, you know, you don't quite understand what you're talking about but you talk anyway so you don't seem silly." _

"_Exactly so," she seemed to agree, but her eyes were focused as if elsewhere. He could not be sure if she were talking to him or not._

"_Well, how did she get here?" The Hatter was a very clever man, but he did not have that answer. "What is your name? Where are you from? Why on earth are you traipsing about the countryside in such a fashion, interrupting other people's tea parties?" demanded the Hare._

"_The fourth," said the girl. The Hare turned and looked at the Hatter, completely deadpan._

"_She's madder than you are," he concluded flatly._

Let us rejoin Alice, for she had not had that peaceful afternoon we all hope for in our days and years; she was pacing erratically across the floorboards of her entirely darkened cottage later that evening, flexing her fingers in agitation. It was a fine thing she had managed to spend at least some time there—for the nexus of her social world turned upon the ramblings and boilings of the tea party, and she was lucky to ever get home some nights—for if she had been paying attention, she might have noticed that she was deftly and automatically stepping around furniture she could not see.

Her mind was working a bit too rapidly, and she was mouthing words and gesticulating in the darkness. She looked a bit feverish, perhaps, though not hysterical. Her updo had begun to sprout loose ends in the salt air by the sea, and the ice blue walking coat she had donned was still about her, for Alice did not have in her mind the desire or even hint of perhaps sitting down for a moment. Finally she stood looking at the square glass pane in the front door. And Alice reached for the knob and was out the path and walking to the nearest thick tree to scrabble her hands over its surface, searching for the outline. The hinged door popped and creaked ajar, and she looked into a deeper darkness than even the forest beyond and stepped into it.

The air took on a distinctly different quality from where she had been before when she emerged; this was a much different part of the forest, there was some new thing here that had not been where her cottage lay. The darkness was close against her eyes; she could hear a solid echoing mass of crickets come from all around her in a great ring, filling up the space and closing it in on her reassuringly, and Alice slowed her pace, cooled her breath and collected her heartbeat. She looked about at the dim outlines of trees and without even searching, heard distant voices and the sluicy sound of water so calm rolling over and through.

It was humid here. There was a river nearby, and she could see fireflies intermittent like flickering candlelights reflecting across its moving ways. The voices came closer, and she could see a slight of a river boat alit with very dim paper lamps slowly flowing its way toward her, a pleasure party on a cruise, the gentle, moving forms of gentlemen and ladies turning to face two silhouettes in the night. The two ladies at the stern lifted their hands out like ancient priestesses invoking old spirits and emotions and began to sing, their voices dipping into a lullabye before intertwining in a duet, circling each other like curious swallows along a grapevine, going up and up until they reached the open space of the skies at last. Alice placed her pretty white hands against the trees on her either side and stretched herself out and listened for a moment, still and peaced at last.

_Zéphyrs embrasés,_

_Versez-nous vos caresses,_

_Zéphyrs embrasés,_

_Donnez-nous vos baisers!_

_vos baisers! vos baisers! Ah!_

She wished this night would never end, in a way, and Alice stood gazing languidly out over the waters until the boat's call lights had long faded into the dark sylvan grays. But she did turn, and though her hands were still turgid with anxiety and the depth of the hour, Alice felt bolstered enough to begin picking her steps away from the river and further into the trees.

And then there it was.

"My God," she whispered to the darkness.

Walling straight up from the darkness and splitting the moonless starry night above was a large looming house, its dreaming spires sudden and jutting. It was balanced but heavy, like an ancient frigate at full sail. It was the estate of a mind's eye, its round towers and darkened oriel windows hinting, suggesting. The stuff of dreams, the triumph of a dynasty forged, heaved, ripped out of a resisting land long far away, hidden among these trees and viewable only from extremes. She could stand at its base and look straight up under the eaves, or she imagined she could stand on a cliff far away and see its spindling mass from a distance. The trees stretched their arms out, reached up to it, but could never cover the tower's needle.

But Alice was brave, and she tapped the elephant head's trunk on the door, wondering if she could possibly be heard from all the rooms in such a house. She bit her lip and turned to face where the river had been. The door clicked and jammered and creaked open, no preamble in the form of stomping feet in the foyer or flick of the nearby curtains to see who it was, and suddenly she could see the faint outline of his white hair stark against the blackened house.

"Did I wake you?" she whispered, hesitant despite coming all this way, ready with an apology she would never need.

"No," he said quietly. "Come in." And she did.

The inside of the house had a feeling of being both thickly carpeted with rugs and lain with dark exotic woods alternatively, and of being filled with a great many curious pieces of furniture everywhere they could be fitted. But Alice could not know for certain this night, as there was no light anywhere but the faintness of his hair. She turned, and he put his hand gently between her shoulder blades and moved her forward through the foyer and into another room until she sunk, not far, and certainly softly, into a divan, where she smoothed her palms against her coat and tried to think of what to say.

She heard his footsteps alternate between the rug and the wood, and there was a metallic swish that went high up the ceiling, and she saw that he had opened the curtains to a very tall set of windows, so high that when he pulled, the motion did not reach the rings at the top until the deep, wholly opaque draping had rippled and the night appeared in a vase shape, and then a slat, with the starlight between the trees. He opened the double hung sash and looked out for a moment, entirely blackened by the light. The crickets had returned, and he stood against the pale gradations of gray, leaning into the windowframe with the pose of a conductor reviewing the score for one last time before lifting his stick to call attention.

Late hours bring strange conversations. Feeling the segments of the day gone past stack up against us, we sometimes find topics to pierce which in the daylight of better judgment we would not circuit, out of nicety. There is nothing in the darkness that is not in the light at any other time, but there are manners about people which reveal themselves in those hours we are meant to never see in waking.

"What do you--" she started and stopped again, but he did not speak, only waited for her to finish. "What would you do if part of you were severed, or bisected; I mean your..." she hesitated to say _reason_, but finished with "Part of your mind or your soul, I mean." That made no sense, but Alice hedged her bets that he would somehow find the answer within her meaning.

"A soul split or splintered away searches to be made whole again, don't you think? It would search for its other half like a magnet. You can't very well have half a soul. The mind, on the other hand, is easy to break into pieces that still think and move and act, albeit abnormally, and with great confusion." Her arms twinged despite her coat, and Alice crossed her arms and sank back into the velvet upholstery. She watched his form lower its head to stare at the hands on the sill.

"But if the part of you that told you where to go, what to do, who to meet, were torn from you, what would you do?" said Alice.

"Your conscience, you mean?"

"I suppose I mean reason, but that does not mean much."

"If you suppose you mean the kind of reason you mean, then you're looking at someone who hasn't had it in a while, you know." Alice was not looking at him, only a silhouette of him, but she did not remark upon it.

"Yes, but you're mad." As soon as she said it, Alice realized it was odd to say the words aloud. Of course he was mad, he was the Mad Hatter, but to speak upon one's condition in such a fashion... it was like telling him he was a haberdasher, or that she was blonde, or that they were awake in the middle of the night, in his house, having this conversation.

"How does that make me any different?"

"I don't think you miss your reason," said Alice, trying carefully not to disparage him, "I think you take joy in knowing that you are free from it."

"Free from reason? If I were free from reason I should wonder at being glad for it. You don't think mad people, perhaps, are still prisoners of the loss of their reason? Or do you suggest that you are your own prisoner of reason?"

"That isn't what I meant," said Alice, "I daresay you don't even _know_ that it's gone. Your reason is replaced by... whatever tells you to move forward, even if it is different or strange from what used to be normal to you." He laughed, and Alice thought it was a laugh out of him she had never quite heard before.

"You give me no credit! I can't possibly know that I'm missing my reason, yet we not only sit here discussing it like a spot of philosophy, but you talk of missing it as if it is a great friend or companion." Alice did not say anything, and he took her silence correctly to mean something significant. "Something alarming must be circling at the back of your head to have drawn you from your bed at this hour and come all the way here to listen to this." The form at the window turned and she guessed he was looking at her, but she could not tell. "Does your task wake you in the middle of the night?"

"No," said Alice, "I haven't been to bed yet. I wanted to talk to you."

"In the middle of the night!"

"Yes, but there was a--" and there was that word again, "A reason."

She was drawing curlicue patterns in the wet sand with a stick, sitting on a boulder with her skirts tucked up under her. Given the Mock Turtle's detailed litany of education the last time they had spoken, Alice had wondered whether he would be of some use, whether he was onto something, and unfortunately, he was. Talking with him was awkward enough, but even more embarrassing when he kept talking in circles, like he was missing a flipper.

"I saw it with my own eyes," he said for the third time. "Like a dust storm, coming across the sand, and I closed my eyes and when I opened them..." She sat and looked at the symbol she was digging in the growing dusk.

"Can you describe it more clearly to me?"

"Course I can." Alice did not wait this time.

"Alright, then, go ahead." He heaved a plaintive sigh, twitched one of his calves ears and went on—he wasn't used to this sort of independent work, being that the Gryphon had always told him what to do and where to go, but he was trying, Alice had to give him that.

"Like I said, it was a dust storm, but then... like a cyclone in the middle, a great cracklin' thing that pushed the waters out of the way."

"Did it come across the lake, or did it come from the forest?"

"It came across the dust and the sand." He was silent for a moment. "I don't think that's what it really looks like, you know."

"What do you mean by that?" The Mock Turtle shook his head.

"It shimmered, like a—like a--"

"Like a mirage?"

"On the sand, yes. Almost like it wasn't there at all, or like looking through a bit of warped plate glass. I remember, I remember I looked up at it and I said, 'What is that?' and the Gryphon said, 'It's nothing, don't you look at it,' because he was explaining metaphysics then and he was drawing in the sand, just like you are."

"And--" she hesitated.

"And then he was just gone."

"I see." She felt very sorry for him, but wasn't sure how to explain it without making him feel worse. He was a salt without a pepper, a lone pen without ink, terribly lost and unable to think really straight. The worst part was that he wasn't even crying in the usual way; just sitting there, staring out to sea, completely run out of grief.

"Oh," said the Hatter when she was finished.

"It's cruel, somehow, to search for good in the unknown, but at least the Tweedles went together," said Alice. "If I went mad, I should at least take some comfort in... in not missing that part of myself, in going on and adjusting to it. But to be perfectly aware of a gaping hole in your side is a loss I do not think I could bear."

"You shouldn't fear the unknown—you can't be sure what's there."

Outside a nightingale began to click and purr.

"Is that how you feel, like there's a hole in you?" she said. "Do you feel mad? Do you know when it happens?"

"It's not a loss," he said. "You gain what you get, which is more, or at least different, than what you had before. And anyway, madness isn't a binary condition, it's a gradient. There are all kinds of madness." Alice had long since relaxed into the back of the divan, tracing and swirling her palm and fingers in its velvet—it would have made the pile turn different tones had there been more light to see it. His low quiet voice had a thaumaturgic quality to slow her rushing through, and filled the still air like the low tide unto the surf of a beaching shelf, coming then going almost rhythmically. "Is that why you're upset? Are you afraid of going mad?"

"I think one must be just a bit mad to get here." And when Alice closed her eyes before the long pause in the conversation, she could hear the distant voices from the yaching party on the river through the window floating up their music, singing wordless calls of love to each other.

She awoke blearily with pointed lines of sunshine except for a large shadow in front of her face. Rubbing her eyes, Alice discovered that the Hatter was standing before her very oddly, situated so that his entire upper body was at a near right angle from his legs, an expression working its way through his eyebrows that couldn't decide whether to be severely hungover or deeply concerned. At the moment it seemed to be hovering near comic indigestion.

"What on earth are you doing in my bedroom?" her voice kept octaves of sleep, sounding her soft and low.

"Ah: our thoughts run parallel this morning; I have a similar query. Why are you asleep on my divan?" She continued rubbing her eyes, enjoying the respite it brought from the crisp light bouncing around the room.

"What?" He let out a breath of air signaling something like concerned confusion but with a hint of patience. She could smell breakfast and hear a kettle roiling somewhere and kept rubbing at her eyes. Her hands smelled vaguely metallic, and the breakfast smelled like it was probably a shortcake with a darker tea than she would have liked. Did the Hatter have a smell as people do, that uniquely identifying thing that one can sense from coming into a room after they did, or the remnant on a coat worn the season before? The thing that did not smell of anything in particular but of a _person_, a very difficult smell to pinpoint or name. Or did he only smell of tea? She was very tired. The Hatter leaned closer and spoke very clearly, already with the disparate aroma of new breakfast tea coming reassuringly off him in waves.

"You were asleep. In my drawing room. Why is that." Now she could see clearly that she was in a room she had never seen before, on a couch she did not recognize. The Hatter had his hands in the pockets of a dark purple dressing gown embroidered with thick gold swirls, and Alice realized she was still wearing her light coat and the dress from the day before. Now he did look genuinely concerned as she gazed at the dark woods on unfamiliar tables.

"You let me in," she said with some surprise, but he continued in the same vein.

"Do you enjoy sneaking into people's houses? I would have thought you'd forgotten the incident prior to our first interview, but I sincerely believe you are far above climbing through windows."

"I did not climb in through the window, I don't do that, I know you let me in--"

"That is interesting, but surely you will agree with my concern when I tell you that I don't remember that."

"You let me into the house," said Alice definitively. "You sat me down, and then you stood in the window and we started talking."

"I think you were dreaming all this, but I don't think your story is fantastical," he said placatingly as she started up on the couch, retort in tongue. "Perhaps you were sleepwalking? Are you a somnambulist?"

"No..." His low voice from the dark hours before came back to her and she remembered what she had been meaning to think about when she awoke. "Are you?" She was met with his eyebrows, disarrayed and bunched together, before they relaxed, thoughtful.

"I don't suppose one could really know without the whole neighborhood coming after you for having stolen eggs out of the icebox or whatever else sleepwalkers do." Then he was looking out the window and scratching the back of his head, sleepiness in every aspect of those half-lidded eyes. She turned too, and could clearly see the swaying waters of the river through the red trees.

"You had the strangest way of talking last night," she said. The kettle screamed for attention very suddenly, and the Hatter's bare feet alternately slapped and thumped against wood and rug, and she heard him singing something about how he feared no foe in shining armor, "though his lance be swift and keen," or something like that. Alice leaned back into the cushion, listening to the water distantly hissing on metal as he removed it from the fire, thinking hard thoughts. He returned in the middle of pouring tea into a cup balanced on his forearm--the sleeves from his dressing gown were far too long and slipped down over his hands--and wrestling his feet into a pair of dark red slippers, hopping as he came through the passage.

"I don't _remember_ seeing you, but do go on." He set both mismatched cups plus their saucers on a low table nearby the sofa and sat straight on it, wrapping his arms criss-crossed round his middle and letting the tea steam. The Hatter was patient, his hair all kinked up over his head with a large patch sticking straight up in the back. There was a calmness there, as if he hadn't quite woken up yet either, and his mechanical way of checking the tea was effortless.

"Well, that's all. We sat and talked." His puzzlement at this superseded his repeated glances at the cups nearby.

"What about?"

"Well—about everything, I suppose."

"Life, the universe, etc.? Or was it tea, tea really is the kingpin of the universe, I mean I do go on about it but let me tell you, _I can go on about it_ and it certainly would seem to be 'everything' as you say--"

"No, it was more about what happened to the Mock Turtle, really. I mean, sort of," she said, trying her best to remember. "It was all very philosophical." He sort of shrugged with his face in a charming way.

"Doesn't sound like me," said the Hatter.

It was later in the afternoon, and Alice was coming up the dockside edge of the high street, once again listening to the light clattering of bestringed paper-wrapped packages as they bounced between her fingers. She had been to the clothier and bought something that she was thinking of now, but let us save a detailed list of Alice's purchases for another time—as they did not carry the weight now that they would soon enough.

The Hatter had begun making glances toward the torsion clock on a side table soon after their conversation—not significant glances, but polite ones, followed by his usual sunny blithe smile—so that Alice had not stayed for breakfast, and now she was quite hungry indeed. She had been halfway down the walk and almost to the tree with the door in it that she remembered she hadn't really observed the inside of the house, and managed to turn and see that it was just as large as she had remembered in the night sky, but this time describable. It was sort of a raspberry color, with lemon trim and gray roof tiles. Alice couldn't tell whether she liked it or not, but she was certainly in awe of its sheer size.

Continuing up the street, she came to a stop by an inn that made her skirts swish forward around her under a large sign which called it the Wynn and Beaumont, for there was a person standing on the inside up against the multipaned plate glass waving furiously and then gesturing at her, grinning. Wearing a large navy hat and a cream coat. She sighed, half fair in amusement, and went in.

"I already ordered for you, I hope you like mutton," he said when she slid into the opposite side of the booth. In the room the people came and went, for it was like a series of large halls with intimate little meeting places and dark wood to go along with the little candlelight.

"Were you standing in the window like that for long?"

"Long enough."

"That's halfway over there, you can hardly see the window from here." He waved a gray glove at her dismissively, and they tucked in.

"I didn't know there were pubs in town," said Alice after poking the new potatoes to let them steam. She gave him a look. "I could have been eating food instead of tea service. As much as I enjoy cream, it is nice to have something different."

"We offered you fish, and you would have none of it," he replied haughtily, but faking it. He suddenly slid further back into the booth, but tilted his head slightly to see someone he obviously did not want to see him in return. Alice had the good sense not to look over her shoulder and start asking shrill questions.

"Who's over there?" she said quietly, cutting into the lamb demurely.

"A person who I very much did not want to see and am rather surprised to see, frankly," he replied in a low undertone. "Do you like stories?"

"I love stories," said Alice, pretending in the same vein that they were not having this conversation.

"Good, because this is a real one. I used to be rather close friends with a peer who goes by his title, as we all do: the Count. He's the one standing across the room, as you take it."

"I must interrupt you this once: what if there were more than one Count in this country? Do you all simply assume that there can be only one, or do you distinguish them somehow?" He blinked at her.

"This one has a distinct head of tomato red hair—don't turn around to look at him."

"I wasn't, but do go on."

"He and I were great friends, for I made by hand his collection of riding hats, as he is a great rider, but he does not hunt, and I shall tell you why another time. I seem to have greatly insulted him once, however, for an elaborate scheme came about as the result of a botched creation. The crown band did not match his redingote, but he was silent upon its delivery. I thought nothing of it, and we later went to one of these hundred or so costume parties that one gets invitations to. I was disguised, mind you, in a--" he paused to think of the word, "An opera cloak, and a mask, for it was a masked ball, and one that was planned to lure me there for the resulting retribution, I think. And all I can remember is that he must have paid off the servants to throw mickey finns in every highball I touched out of revenge, for I woke the next morning in a public fountain, dressed like a bat and drunk as a lord, _and_--" He raised a finger and pressed on despite Alice's giggling into her napkin, "And I had lost my pocketwatch. I found it, of course, three weeks later in a blueberry pie sitting on an open windowsill, but it never ran properly again after that."

"And you fell out after that?" said Alice stiltingly when she could breathe again.

"I don't think you'd be speaking to me so much if you woke up drenched like that," he said, raising a glass to his mouth before he slid further back into the booth once more. "There!" he said in a vigorous whisper, "There. Turn very slowly as if you would look at the publican at the bar and observe him, you can't miss him."

It was easy enough to find the Count, for his shock of hair truly was red. Most people who are said to have red hair do not; they have orange hair, or very dark blonde hair. The man posturing at the counter with his Hessian resting upon the golden bar at its base had a dashing coif of tomato red hair, all zinged through with pure color, almost as if it had been dyed. He did look rather legendary, Alice thought, but she could not catch his face. He did have the shoulders and bearing of someone who is too handsome for his own good and dangerously clever to boot, she thought, but turned back to the broccoli soup with the air of a girl who is decidedly unimpressed with an elegant man from across the room.

The Hare was coming and going in what he called preparations for the upcoming trip, but it mostly looked like he was dashing about distractedly, first going to check the shutters on the cottage, then coming back inside to bounce skitterly down the hallway to fling open dresser drawers, searching for a tiny house key in the mess that ensued. Alice sat in one of the upholstered spindly chairs in the library with the door cracked watching him. Eventually he spotted her eye in the sliver between the jamb and came to push the door open and address her politely in his request, but did not cross the threshold.

"I've let the house in the past to visitors, but this time there'll be no one to sit, as it is late in the season, and so I want you to look in every now and then, won't you?" Alice nodded as he bounced away most seriously, and rose in some amusement to follow him, just to see where he went. She followed his flashing foot to the doorstep, but found no trace of him, instead seeing swinging between two trees was a hammock full of supine Hatter.

"Have you seen the Hare?" she called to him. She went closer, letting her shadow fall across his freckles, but he did not so much as twitch or open an eye. "Are you asleep?" she said, and waited.

Alice gathered together her skirts, curled up one leg beneath her and leaned as carefully as she could into the side of the hammock, not quite sitting but instead balancing on the rope's edge, leaving one boot toe firmly in the ground to steady them as her new presence gave the whole orchestration a definite but gentle heave. This did not seem to have any immediate effect on the object of her attention, however, and Alice slowly let out her breath half in relief. She put one hand on the rope across from her, arm over him, and waited. He seemed to be solidly asleep, though she was not the best judge of a potential farce. Our heroine was still waiting for him to open his eyes and burst into laughter at her folly when he wiggled his nose slightly before sighing in deep sleep. The girl considered this a moment before taking immediate and decisive action. She gave a push on his shoulder, tugged lightly on a lock of his white hair, and even gently shook the hammock itself before deciding that in fact, in complete and utter fact, was the man currently involved in a business transaction of sorts with a chap by the name of Hypnos.

She lifted his arm, palm side up, and the wrist gave and bent back languidly on its own weight, his fingers forming their natural curve; that heavy weight that comes from being truly and deeply out was there in every smooth, relaxed line of him. The gloves were short-palmed; she could just make out the lines beneath, but Alice (in an action she would have regretted had she been just a bit more curious about what was under the gloves) put his limb down and looked at him, wondering what he dreamed about. Or if he dreamt at all. What did people here find absurd? The Hare had wrinkled his nose at the premise of the daily business transactions of normal hares in the field; did the Hatter dream of balancing ledgers, or of the rules in the Chancery courts, or coke mines, greasy shop windows, and large women in dingy poke bonnets selling fish heads in the streets? She looked at the cascade of blue sky over her shoulder and every color making up the landscape, comparing it in her mind to what she had seen of blackened and burnt London. What widened within him? Alice half-smiled; _Within me is the longest day, the sun wheels in slanting rings, it does not set for months_. The man before her took such a deep breath of the air as if it were an indulgence of rarity, and sunk, if it was possible, even further into the netting with a sigh.

This lent itself to an opportunity, not one Alice had been directly considering for some time, but that spontaneously arose within her to form a sort of bubble. The bubble was peculiar, and light, and floated to the forefront of her mind where, no matter how hard her serious side could swat at it, would not sink or pop or go away. It was the sort of thing an inquisitive mind by nature does not let slip away, no matter how ridiculous or unladylike it may be to one's dignity. Pinching back her breath once more, Alice, wincing and squinting in anticipation of discovery, leaned forward until she could feel the sleeping man's even breathing on her cheeks and bit her lip.

Relaxing her eyes again, the young blonde took a good long look at his freckles; a careful and interpretive inspection, if you will. For this was her design in leaning so close. Curious things. They were fascinating in simplicity and perfection of shape—none of these blotchy jagged giraffe-like patches one sometimes sees on particularly freckled people; rather a more evenly distributed set of light beige dots across his nose and youthful cheeks, she found. It almost appeared as though they had not bred by the natural force of life; had some invisible artist's hand taken up a tiny paintbrush and applied each individual circle with care and levity? And then she was reaching forward to just barely brush her fingerprints over the flesh, just to test it, just to see how far it would give, just to see how smooth it could possibly be, covered in those spots, when there was quite suddenly a sound like a goat coughing over his cud on a distant hill.

Alice sat up so quickly that she almost met the new company from the grass underfoot. Regaining her posture too fast, she very nearly capsized, her bustle upending like a magnificent ship, and only after extricating her shoe from between the tiny netted diamonds did she manage to right herself and stand perfectly still. Grabbing the sides of the hammock again to stop it from twisting about as if in an ocean squall, she stared very hard at the man with white hair to see if perhaps he really was mocking her somehow. He reached up to rub his nose and dreamt on. There was a slight movement behind her, and turning, Alice found the March Hare with his paws clasped behind his back, a sunny smile on his rabbity features. There was a densely awkward pause before Alice had the slow, surmounting realization that the carmine color her face had suddenly been repainted meant little to an animal with no reference point as to the concept of flushed, utter embarrassment.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't hear you come up from behind," she said by way of a shaky opener.

"Terribly sorry to interrupt—I must say you do have something of Selene herself bending to gaze down upon young Endymion, but that is beside the point, I am sure. There is a telegram just come, and I have put it on the elephant-leg credenza in the foyer." The Hare rose up on his formidable toes to look into the swinging-net-thing. "Did he not have enough tea? Tschk; told him that net thing is dangerous." And with that the Hare bounced serenely over to a distant patch of tall grass to see about this thing pussywillow.

She was just breathing again when she turned to find a Hatter completely awake and sitting up, no trace of the nebulous clouds post-sleep upon his face or in his clear eye.

"_Salut au monde," _he said in mild cheerfulness upon seeing her there, but then frowned at Alice's stark look, which was rather more like a prairie dog gazing upon its approaching death by coyote than a pretty young woman surrounded by the beauteous bounty of early autumn. "I say, you haven't been eating milkweed, have you? You do look like something's disagreeing with you, and not in a polite _point:counterpoint_ fashion."

"Enjoy your lie-down? It is a nice afternoon," said Alice in a very small voice.

"Was I asleep?" he sounded surprised, and looked about him for evidence. "I really wish I were more aware of these things when they happen; I get to sleep so very rarely, I think. Or maybe I don't remember..."

"I've got a telegram waiting," said Alice as she headed for the house, pressing her cheeks with her cool palms. When she returned to the doorstep, though, she was halfway through opening a blue telegram, and Alice felt a bit blindsided.

"Ah!" cried the Hatter, bounding toward her and grabbing it, "It's finally here!"

"Is it for you?"

"Yes, yes!" he said, and shredded the outer leaf to get to the good part. She watched his eyes go back and forth like a typewriter cage, looking ever more thrilled at its contents.

"What does it say?"

"Hang on, hang on," he said happily, humming out the printed words and increasing the suspense until at last he burst out grinning and struck out his arms to shove the telegram right up into her face like a signboard. She plucked it delicately and stared at the missive before looking up at him chidingly.

"Isn't it fantastic?!" he cried, laughing, and turned to dash off across the lawn.

"I don't know!" she called after him. "I can't read whatever language that is!" The Hare came out of the grass at that moment, headed for Alice just as the Hatter reappeared from what was apparently some sort of victory lap.

"It's here!" he cried to the Hare without stopping.

"Oh good!" said the Hare as the Hatter disappeared.

"_What's_ here?!" cried Alice, who was losing patience.

"You're going to like this, I think," the small rabbit told her.

"I wish I knew what it was," said Alice, a bit annoyed.

"It's a party!" the Hatter shouted very close suddenly over her shoulder. "A champagne ball, these foreign royals give one every year and for some reason they keep giving me invitations!" here he made a sound like a cheerful clarinet, "And there's dancing and lots of people you don't know, and _so much champagne you can't even imagine_, and everyone stays out all night getting drunk as anything and comes away the best of friends in the morning!" He was clapping his hands together and looked so pleased that Alice could not help but join him in the mood.

"You'll want a dancing partner, you know how those people are," the Hare instructed, and the Hatter gave the woods beyond the garden a sly look.

"We'll need to kidnap someone," he said, and straightened suddenly. "The Duchess!" he cried, and took off around the house.

"I don't have any proper ballgowns," said Alice to the Hare.

"We'll get you one!" said the Hatter as he reappeared from around the house and disappeared again.

"It takes months and months to have a dress made," she continued practically.

"Don't worry about that; surely you realize that every armoire in this place gives you new togs every time you open and close the door," the rabbit told her.

"That is awfully convenient," she replied.

"We do try," said the Hare.

"Well, I suppose it would be nice to go, and see something new," said Alice. She looked at the strange alphabet on the blue slip of paper. "Who are these people, anyway?"

"Foreigners," said the Hatter behind her again, reaching over her shoulder for the telegram and replacing it with a cup of tea. "No Duchess, it is assured."

"Well, alright, then," replied Alice, sipping her tea. "But I shan't stay out _too_ late, you know."

The Hatter and the Hare looked at each other for a moment before the Hare burst out in bizarre laughter at this, and Alice would eventually learn why.


	12. Chapter 12

But when a young lady is to be a heroine ... [s]omething must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.

Jane Austen, _Northanger Abbey_

Après moi, le déluge.

Louis XV

* * *

Not every ball takes place moments after the invitation is slipped into our home post. There is a seemingly endless wait which involves a lot of sitting around doing nothing, with no particular exciting episode to punctuate any of it—which is why balls and grand parties are so tremendous to begin with. They are the goal toward which we suffer in the meantime when we are not going to balls and grand parties. In this interim, week-old newspapers litter the floor, the tea service shan't be scoured until someone gets up the verve to do something about it, and there is a general kind of malaise that begins to smother the finer senses. The worst part is that the ball created the waiting, but without the wait, there would be no ball. However, let us not say that waiting periods are all monotony: the excitement for you and me might be found hidden in the details when people are pent up inside a place with no one to talk to but themselves and each other. Thus we find our heroine, and dare I speculate, dear reader, our emerging hero as well.

Alice pressed her fingernails into the heel of her palm one by one in a rhythm, remembering piano lessons from younger days and listening to the tapping that made the leaves bounce on the vine next to the window which she had opened in an outward swinging motion. She squeezed her fists like that in time before reaching out to pull close the diamond pane. On the last sunny day before Alice began to begin each morning with a sigh upon seeing the impenetrable clouds above, they had gone to the tracks for the final race of the season. The animals at the gate were large pig-like things with skin the color of pistachio pudding, and Alice was more surprised at her own lack of surprise regarding the contestants than she was at their actual appearance. The Hatter had proved himself to be quite an efficient handicapper of... whatever these things were, and Alice wondered if perhaps this was how he was moneyed, but she did not ask and he did not comment upon it. He had explained nothing but spent the time between gates regaling her with an odd, piecemeal story involving a false mustache and a policeman who apparently wanted a word with him about a stolen parrot.

Once the rainy season started, hidden strata of dirt and soft spots in the leaf-strewn grass cooperatively began to form mini-lakes all across the lawn so that Alice felt in turns both the keen desire to jump in each pool to see if it perhaps went somewhere and a disgusted shudder at the hideous way the water created a honeycomb effect which seemed to grow finer and more complex every time she looked outside. More often than not, the rain came down not in gusting torrents or hard thick pelts that gave way to soft shimmering sunsets, but a constant flow in trackmarks down the sides of the house, as if it were crying for something lost. Even the wardrobes felt the effects, for Alice could now only find high gowns in deeply blushing shades of burgundy or violet with startlingly large bows at the collar when she went to dress. Each morning she inspected carefully for anything larger or ballgowny, but as of yet the magic was lacking.

They had begun autumning, if that were possible, at the Hatter's. The Hare was not gone off quite yet, but he had begun slinging things into cupboards and drawers with a purposeful, striding energy, and the Hatter had assumed a placid and blithe air, opened an umbrella, taken Alice's arm and ambled toward the swinging gate before she found herself at the raspberry colored place with the apparent unspoken understanding between them that this would be well and fine. But Alice was not keen to shrug and passively occupy without inspection such a place as where the Hatter carried on the business of living. She could not really find the wherewithall to call it a home, for its dark trappings and deep marbled woods gave it an air of belonging to some great and ancient wealth that could not possibly consider a place of mere living capacity sufficient for its majesty; it was not a mansion or an estate, either, for it was far too eccentric to be turned respectable by a portrait gallery, statuary, or series of trophy-like topiaries leading up a long gravel drive to the front portico. No, this place was something new altogether, she felt. She rose from the quasi-secluded window-box to look into a cabinet nearby, and this time she opened the delicate latch to get a better look at the curiosities inside.

The Hatter had scores of them inside these hexagonal glass-paneled display cases taller than she was that were placed strategically like side-tables around the dark sitting room where he had placed her on that singular night. But in them were not tiny crystal animals or arrangements of dried flowers as in any other house of the day, but instead an almost ironical display of what he in his turn perhaps considered useless objects: logical artwork or cogent curio pieces. Here was an assortment of what she could only identify as a collection of tools—scientific or nautical instruments, brass contraptions meant to instruct, to clear the path, to guide the way. There were astrolabes with tiny engraved signs of the heavens, hemispherical cup anemometers with beautifully lathed bases—everything was bright and shining, and strangely protected behind the odd barrier. Alice didn't touch them; they were far too smooth for her fingerprints to smudge. She shut the glass with a snap and looked over her shoulder at where her host was sprawled out over a dark red fainting couch, one leg hooked up around the curliquing wood back, with crossword puzzle before him but his attention off somewhere through the window and between the trees past the lawn. He looked very relaxed but for the distance in his gaze.

She crossed the room to sit on an ottoman next to an overgrown palmetto within his view. The room was large and handsome, and certainly interesting with its general sense of being something a world-jetting game hunter or exotic jungle botanist would be proud of, but Alice had been inspecting the details with a put-on casual air for a while now, and so curiosity had begun to draw its velvety question-mark-shaped tail between her ankles with an incessant purring. How she longed to open each door here, to slowly take the grand staircase up to the landing and let the corridors above make themselves be known to her in dramatic reveal. She wanted to know, she had to know what sort of a place the Hatter lived in—this interest had superseded the vagaries of the Duchess's instructions and plans in investigation and was so exhaustingly prevalent a question for her that she was growing rather hungry.

"Bored?" he said at last, looking amused at her cerebral countenance.

Alice was terribly bored. The Hatter did not seem to be offended by his own suggestion that he was neglecting his rightful duties as host; she was not surprised, as he seemed to think the sitting room had presented itself far better than he ever could have introduced it. Alice had glanced over the cobbled-together list of residents whose names she actually recognized five times in the last hour and was, at this point, more interested in the way she had looped her _g_s than she was in who was missing or who had been seen last.

"Does it rain like this for a long time?" she said finally.

"Forever and ever, at least until winter," he said. They lapsed back into silence until a longcase clock near the shadows on the wall began to chime; Alice counted the bell on _one_ over and over to avoid the passage of time, not feeling any desire to know how long they had been sitting there. She was trying not to wonder what sort of a partner he would be at this ball—what more oddities and shenanigans she would have to sigh over—until she realized that she really didn't mind. It wasn't _exactly_ her problem to clothesline any untoward behavior, and he had been receiving return invitations—perhaps there would be something to it all. He was sitting on the sofa only now, looking for all the world as if he were ever her rainy day companion who... just happened to have very odd white hair. She twisted her fingers into the church and steeple and considered this.

"Do you play cards?" Alice found herself momentarily perplexed by the question, having never seen the Hatter with a deck of cards or ever in the midst of a game.

"Well, I suppose it depends on the game," she replied. He began to extricate his leg from around the couch's imperial back and began rummaging through a drawer in a table with legs textured like tree trunks, and she felt the feathery wisp of doubt about playing cards with this man.

Alice had to admit, however, that it was a rather clever bit of divertissement once she began to understand the rules, which he was loathe to clarify and explain and made her think perhaps he played unwillingly. At first it had seemed that there were no rules and he was just having fun with leading her around in circles over nothing, but the game turned out to be a variation on Fish, and she saw his assumption that she already understood the sport's mechanics. So though they were playing with a deck that Alice, frankly, found rather disconcerting, she gamely and successfully kept up to him, occult or no. She had, on more than beginner's luck, won the first round ("Well played," he had said with keen sidelong look suggesting that perhaps he found her indeed to be a worthy opponent, to which she had dramatically lifted one brow and replied in an archly cunning voice, "Again, sir?"--it was all rather comically serious).

"Do you have any Aces?" she asked, and showed him the card in her hand as proof that she could ask for them. He put the Ace of Cups on the table and worried his pipe back and forth over his teeth, concentrating on the hand. Alice eased her new acquisition smoothly against its mate and looked at her own cards, which were separated by arcanum. The suits were easy enough to understand, but the set of extra cards beyond those, with their variable actions, required some interpretation—each had a prize move associated with it, good or bad, and one could snatch full books of cards from one's opponent with the right one. She currently had XVIII, bearing the image of the moon shining over pairs of stone columns and howling dogs. She didn't like it; it was a strange and forceful picture, not at all the romantical bath of white light she liked to think of coming from the dreamy satellite far above.

"Brilliant!" he said, as if he were about to announce _checkmate_, "This will be a lateral move." He snapped a card onto the table between them, and upon its face Alice could see a picture of a young man with yellowish-white curls and a lemniscate painted on the brim of his smart hat, gesturing with a long silver baton in hand.

"What does that one mean?"

"Er, wisdom and the power to know the unknowable," he replied offhandedly. "Lets me ask for a card I don't have. Yes, that's very like cheating, isn't it?" he said at her look, "Good thing there's only one. Shall I try sevens? I like sevens and shall take the chance that you are flush with them." She was, and she fanned the three she had onto the table, and he took them without braggadocio or comment.

"What does this one mean?" said Alice, and held up the card marked with XVI. The Hatter's expression changed from one of concentration to gracious defeat and amusement.

"You clever girl!" he cried, and Alice turned it over to look at it more carefully. "How very like you to pull off such a fantastic trick. That's the proverbial Old Maid," he said. "It ends the game automatically—I was rather hoping it would be at the bottom of the pile where I wouldn't have to worry about it, but you have won again, and perhaps that's all that matters in the end."

"Oh," said Alice, and she felt much better about not understanding anything after that.

They played two more hands, both of which the Hatter won, and then he slid back a wooden panel in the gaming table and pressed a golden switch on a panel of many before he seemed to remember something, as he winced and froze with his hand above the switchboard. This was the most mysterious and attention-arresting thing he had done all day, and Alice watched as an inner circle section of the table sunk low into the floor, and there was a tremendous rattling sound followed by a bursting whistle of steam which sprang up from the table before it cleared away and there was revealed a full tea service right there.

She stared at him, and the Hatter had the good nonsense to look a bit sheepish.

"Er," he began delicately, pouring her tea first by way of placation. "I don't keep help. They're absolutely useless, always trying to organize and standardize things. But it is a large house, you know, and it is rather annoying having to slide up and down the bannister all day just to fetch tea when one has a tendency to crave it every five minutes—going up is the hard part. Do you take sugar? Oh, no, of course not. There's a steamvalve pipe system in the whole house, they look like brass decorations on the walls; one table in every room is connected to that and the horizontal dumbwaiters."

"Is this all your doing?"

He hesitated, let the moment slide past, and then--"Yes."

"You astonish me." It was really getting to be a repetitive sentiment.

"Oh, rather," he said by way of being a bit pleased. They split the entire meringue and she really had to admit that the house could make a fine cup of tea—not so strong as to cause the bitter shakes, but dark and lovely like the grain in lacquer rosewood.

"Why do you have a kitchen, then?" said Alice, who was not willing to let this rather juicy piece of information get away from her too soon.

"Well, it's got to have a place to make things, doesn't it? It's not magic." She tried to connect how automaton steam boiler plus furnished kitchen equalled the cup of tea in her fingertips, and decided that as she hadn't directly seen the kitchen itself yet, she couldn't quite pass judgment. But lo, it was an odd realization which came to her: the Hatter's house was really kind of—of interdependent upon itself, a place with internal workings and systems, not simply rooms or display galleries. And then Alice could tell that any tour of the place would play out in roles of mutual exchange—a game for a room.

"We could luge the stairs," he said when they reached the bottom of the staircase.

"Hmm?" said Alice, who was already distracted by the ripeness of exploration, for the upstairs landing ran somewhat discreetly around the outer edges of the rotunda, and no matter which direction she craned her neck, the vantage seemed the same.

"Don't tell me you've never tried it," he said, and suddenly leaned in angles and moved in such a way that she could not avoid seeing him, and they crossbattled like that for a moment. Alice stood on toe to peer over his shoulder, and only when he mimicked her stance, straightfaced, did she return to the conversation, at least partially.

"What?"

"It's like sliding down the bannister."

"That's terribly unladylike," she said automatically, and turned around to look over her other shoulder at the short hall that went _that _way. The runners that started were expressed of an odd abstract swirling pattern, and seemed of another place or time. Everything in the house was just on the verge of being normal and looking as it did in her natural home or any other English house, but with the strangest sense of being just a smidge _off, _just by one or two degrees in physicality or seconds in time, and Alice rather wished he would stop carrying on so.

"You've never tried that either, have you?"

"Of course not," she said dismissively.

"Well, you _do_ want to see the rest of the house, don't you?" Alice was given pause by this rather intriguing and potentious statement. "Ah, I'm right, aren't I? The aired out sitting room is never enough; it's the gate to the darkened and mysterious garden path leading to parts unknown. You should see the look on your face," he said, and smiled strangely, halfway between smug and magnanimous. She crossed her arms over her chest and gazed pointedly at the window in the far corner, not sulking, but feeling a twinge at where he had pinpointed her.

And now she was sitting sidesaddle where he had placed her at the top of the stairs on the landing looking down into the large tiled checkerboard atrium, but Alice was more interested in the oddly-patterned vase she could see just around the corner up here in the private quarters of his _house_. Where he _lived_. She could just see door handles poking out from beyond mahogany jambs, more clean and bright brass. He was giving her instructions on how to balance herself as she slid down, or something about how to fall. Alice wondered what he kept in all those rooms if he lived here alone.

"Are you listening to me?"

"No," she said vaguely, and stretched her neck so far that she had to hook her boot between the railings to lean far enough back to see down the hall. She sat up again to find him looking just the slightest bit annoyed.

"A governess doesn't teach you these sorts of real-world skills, you know. This has actual application," and he stabbed his finger into the bannister swirl to drive home the point.

"Really," said Alice, trying to remember how many floors there were and coming up uncertain—didn't the place have a mansard roof?

"I shall prove it to you one day," he was saying, and then he had his hand in the small of her back, and Alice started to feel her center of gravity being dislodged in a fluid motion before she opened her mouth and began to squawk and flail like some sort of beribboned exotic bird being matter-of-factly ejected from the nest for the first time. The bannister, unfortunately, was lacquered and her feet did not reach the runner-covered stairs; as she approached the curled-off baluster at the bottom, Alice could vaguely see blurred portraits hanging in the stairwell and rushed past a momentary thought regarding what a broken arm might feel like. But perhaps out of a continuing streak of beginner's luck or maybe even some innate sense of coordinate physics, Alice twisted herself sideways and landed with a bit of a bounce to her toe on the dark Oriental rug before the front door, bones whole. She looked up and up and saw him standing arms akimbo at the very top of the stairs, leaning forward, hands on knees, to look back down at her with an _I told you so, didn't I_ expression about him, which was oddly becoming, but she did not welcome the sentiment warmly given his treachery.

"That was low!" she trumpeted, for there was some distance between them and their conversation came out sounding like spelunkers arguing over which echoing tunnel they should have turned at.

"You should thank me," she heard him say, "I'm sure you wouldn't have done it without my expert persuasion. In fact, I daresay you are more well-rounded for the experience and will write to your mother or somesuch thing as ladies do when there's lifechanging odds about."

"I ought to go home if you're going to spend the afternoon putting me in danger like that," she replied a bit haughtily, but without much heat, for she had suddenly remembered home did not mean home. He leaned with his elbow against the other baluster all the way at the top and assumed a cheerful and grinning casual air.

"Did I tell you there's a ballroom on the fourth floor?" Alice stopped from where she was considering whether to reach for the handle and narrowed her eyes several feet from the front door, another one undeserving of her censure and prejudice. The man at the top of the stairs really did hold all the juicy trump cards these days, she felt. He could just as well hold a ball in the front atrium as on an entirely other floor. But then she turned and saw a lovely looking closed set of white double doors with gold leaf banding pressed gently into the moulding. Alice looked up at the Hatter all the far way up the stairs, and then at the handles. She loosely calculated how long it would take him to reach her, taking into account the slick rails on the stairs and confidently decided this was well worth the effort. She gave a small wave (to which he waved back with a bit of an equally amiable but confused air, which she felt was very promising), a girlish flounce for good measure, and pushed open the dining room doors with all flourish.

The one thing she could say was that it was easily the longest table she had ever seen. It was a very tall, and oval, and dark emerald room, with white crown moulding so bright it was nearly blue, a set of very high-backed straight-looking chairs and a runnerboard service roughly about the size of a small stable off to one side which had large brass pipes sleekly coming off its edges, shaped impressively like an organ. But there was no centerpiece or display settings, for everything was covered in dustcloths in a strange sad sort of way, and then the Hatter appeared and was flapping his hands at her to shuttle her out, pulling the doors close at his back.

"What do you want to go in there for!" he cried, but he was not angry, merely put out at having had to steer her back from her diversion.

"Well, alright," said Alice congenially, "Now what shall we do? Are you going to slap me on the wrist for trespassing where I shouldn't?"

And then Alice found herself looking at the back of his head with some traditional Alician concern, her boot toes hooked awkwardly and rather unwillingly under his ankles. She reached for her skirts for the fifth time and again he swatted her hand away, being very particular that she not try to make a break for it again. They were sitting on the landing at the top of the stairs looking back down into the main entry, and Alice could just see the start of the browning grass outside through the open half of the front door, which was being propped with one of his shoes wedged haphazardly in a squishy way underneath. He had grabbed the Japanese folding panels from a corner by the fireplace in the great sitting room, marched up the stairs to drop it onto the landing with a bang, pulled her down (despite protestations and Alice making it a third of the way back down the stairs before he could catch her) behind him into _pillion _and was now arranging his shockwig hair to adjust for the strap on the pair of welding goggles he had brandished from somewhere.

"Should I have a pair of those?" said Alice skeptically, and eyed the current status of her hem again. She had begun to accept that this was about to happen and was trying to at least mitigate the damages. He turned to look at her, but she could not read his eyes through the dark lens.

"You really _have_ never done this before, have you? What on earth did you do all day as a child? Besides darken our tea table with your tiny shadow and nearly lose your head?"

"Behaved myself and completed my lessons," said Alice. It was a mostly true statement--she had never tobogganed down the staircase at home, but for present purposes it was accurate. "Why, what did you do—set fire to your tutor's hair and let all the pigs into the garden? Did your father cane you or switch you?" she asked, teasing. He straightened imperially, put his considerable nose in the air and spoke so loftily she couldn't tell if he were joking or not.

"I supped on milk and honey and wore a lambskin cap over my perfect curls." He began to lean forward, but then thought a moment and turned back to her again. "You're going to want to hold onto something, you know. Not unless you want mangled and twisted up knuckles," he said as her hands reached for the sides of the panel. She clenched them into light fists again and looked at him, a bit of insolence creeping around the edge of her jawline. He grabbed her hands and in one singular jerking motion Alice's insolent chin became familiarly acquainted with his shoulderblades—she preferred not to dwell on the way her fingers were forcibly clapsed somewhere near the top button on his (silk, she realized with a cringe) waistcoat. She felt him ready, then begin to lean forward, and then just as the ceiling and walls began to tilt, out of her uncovered ear she heard him say, "Wait, _I _don't have anything to hang onto..."

Then he started yelling, and through the thrust tension of every muscle in her arms fighting him off while he simultaneously pinned her back against him to keep her from tumbling down the stairs, she started yelling, and the whole thing was about as panicky and cacophonous and comedically clumsy as one might imagine, what with the slam-puck clattering and the banging and the rushing sound that was growing louder and the _yelling_. The most marvelous thing, Alice realized with clarity as she reached a new note, was the way they simply glided across the tile in the rotunda, almost as if it had been laid with that very purpose in mind. It was, all things considering, a rather beautiful and graceful motion.

And then they came to a rather sudden sticky squelching stop in the front lawn, which, if you remember correctly, dear reader, was, shall we say, rather damp. Alice extricated herself at last from her host's clutches and feeling a bit dazed, sat back and remembered to breathe again. The Japanese folding panel, of course, was a total loss, the could see, the wood having failed to stand up to experimental abuse. At least it was that and not her fingers after all. The Hatter slowly turned and faced her, and Alice thought was a curious thing it was how dull he looked out in the open cloudlight until she realized that his hair had turned a dingy greyish brown. He lifted the goggles and there were two large bright white rings around his eyes, negative space that the mud had missed when they had hit the puddle.

She felt sympathy for him having bravely sacrificed to be in front and take the full throttle of the day's events, but she felt the laughter even more. And Alice wondered what the staircases would be like and whether the tiles were as smooth in the grand pavilion style rooms in the villa, or the castle, or whatever glamorous place this ball was to be held. It would be alright, she thought in conjunction with the euphoria and relief, no matter what happened, because at least it would be a laugh.

"Well," he said in a most serious tone, and she started busting up giggling again as a large hunk of dirt slid off his front with a _fshthplunth_, "I hope you found that very educational, because I think my right sock is in a state of hashed up horror, and I would hate to lose a favored pair if we gained nothing from this." She snorted, hid her face in his shoulders again, and then he was laughing as well.


	13. Chapter 13

I don't really know what to say about this chapter except that I'm so excited that we're finally at this part. The final scene has taken me almost 9 months to write and rewrite, which is a really long time, but I wanted it to be good. This is a long chapter for a reason--I didn't want the Hatter to leave. I'm very fond of him. I'm fond of you too: thanks for your thoughts and reviews, you know I love to hear from you.

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Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.

Graham Greene

Alice was not really the sort of girl who publicly participated in that peculiar sport known as goggling like a cod, which made her open-mouthed surprise upon her alighting into the marble entryway all the more archly enjoyable for the Hatter, who really began secretly to triumph when the apples of her cheeks appeared brightly and she smiled rhapsodic, actually showing her teeth for the first time since he'd seen her. She let loose the silk ruched opera cloak hooded about her and promptly forgot its existence as it was spirited safely away.

Everything for a ball becomes elevated into an excess we welcome with open arms, for gloves are not mere gloves but _opera_ gloves, and great coats must be _Inverness, _and shirtfronts made of nothing less than _marcella_, and there are ribbons and opera hats to be appointed with precision, silk dress scarves and pure silver cufflinks the shape of trumpeting elephants, hothouse gardenias to be slaughtered en masse for a roomful of boutonnières on spinning lapels, and along with all the stock Earls and Dukes are the Marchionesses, Chevaliers, Sahiba, and Grandees. Every punch bowl is filled with claret-cup so calm and serene that the floating mint sprigs are as contemplative as lily pads, but they will remain untouched tonight, for there is that _king_ of wines, champagne, that hazy golden gazing pool into which the Bacchanalian will soon find a version of themselves staring back that they had forgotten about in the daylight hours, or missed terribly, or never been formally introduced to.

The villa on the lake was a very large and charming rectangular house, and it was just a little serendipitous, but likely planned, that the invitation had apparently instructed that the dress be white tie. Every ceiling space had been set a-glister with chandeliers as tierful as cakes inverted, and Alice's gown began to shed its sober bluish white and hint harmoniously with the warm glow that radiated outward from the very essence of the white and cream and black and gold gathering already at hand. Ceilings high and moulding delicate, she could have stood on that same precise tile where she had stopped the clicking of her court heels to stare all night, but the Hatter began to coax her forward, toward the sound of the overture and a rising din of the _vox populi_.

If Alice had felt upon opening her wardrobe that morning a certain embarrassment at the sheer opulence of her own gown, white and flounced and ruched and flowing silently out from her, the newly arrived women here had put the 'crowning touch to their own audacities' with more ribbons and ruffles and extraordinary lengths of train that she wondered at their ever being able to sit for dinner. Further within was a double staircase, bursting at the railings with coteries of the well-born and bred, who were so bedecked with opals and sheenful silks and quizzing glasses that the walls were set to a bright flame by the swinging pendants' sharp reflections. She had been striding quickly—or at least the Hatter was, he was always striding about a place and Alice found herself practically running taking skipping steps to keep up—toward the epicenter of things when a human form reared up on the horizon before Alice, but before she could either stop or apologize for failing that, the person there embraced her in a startlingly continental fashion and then pulled Alice back to have a good look at her.

"This is La Contessa," said the Hatter, and it was a few ticks before Alice realized he was introducing her. La Contessa was a great hearty black-haired blossom of a woman in about five hundred yards of unruffled thick pink silk and hung with pearls, breaking the dress code in a very prepossessing sight as she stood out in the crowd. She might have been the hostess or some viceregent for whoever the host was, for she was receiving people, smiling at everyone in exactly the same way, as if to ask rhetorically why there hadn't _always _been a party here, and why haven't you been here all this time anyway? This was the face she gave to Alice, and she said as if to confirm something,

"You _are_ lovely, dear, abso_lute_ly," in a strange accent Alice had never heard before.

"Oh, ah," said Alice, who was still recovering from this exchange of something like formalities. The woman's mouth moved again, and she was saying something, but there began quite a wall of sound, and then Alice was alone in the crowd.

The source of this clangor came from up above near the railing at the landing, and Alice followed the waving gloved fingers. Now, the only way to properly start a ball is to send up a welcome flare that addresses the business of the evening, which if you are well-heeled and experienced is the business of drinking. And the best way to say "what ho" to a lot of already chummy people who are about as taciturn as a foghorn to get on with the thing is in the form of a drinking song, and this was precisely what the Hatter had either taken upon himself or had been recruited into doing, for the woman called La Contessa stood next to him at the top of the balustrade as he launched into his cue. Alice could follow the words, and this is the translation of what he sang:

_Let us drink from the goblets of joy adorned with beauty,_

_and the fleeting hour shall be adorned with pleasure._

_Let us drink to the secret raptures which love excites,_

_for this eye reigns supreme in my heart._

_Let us drink, for with wine _

_love will enjoy yet more passionate kisses._

He had a fine voice, the twirling sways and dips clear without much effort—it really was a fine voice, she thought. The light seemed to change on the pair at the top of the staircase, for the Hatter's white was crisp, the black depthless. It was the contrast between the two tones and the lack of a hazy shimmer, perhaps, that set him aloft, Chairman of the sybaritic ritual. Alice wondered if he opened every fine ball with this florid petition to _drink, drink, drink_. But then he paused, and with a throaty voice and a full heart, La Contessa sang the responding call, hailing the ancient paired virtues of love and wine, and Alice was following down with her eyes the patterns in the iron wrought bannisters when she startled and jumped a bit; everybody around her sang back to the pair above, which again translated was

_Be happy--wine and song_

_and laughter beautify the night;_

_let the new day find us in this paradise._

This entreaty from the chorus was a pretty sentiment, and then Alice realized that everyone here really truly hoped and knew in their hearts that tomorrow _would_ find them in a comfortable way. These people lived in a world removed from even the detachment of the Wonderland, some gorgeous rooftop panascape of society where the music was always in a swell, where parties ran into parties and merged effortlessly upstairs and downstairs in glowing halls and castles, where the champagne flowed in great tiered waterfalls, where the orchestra never grew tired and played one's favorite waltz every hour, where the flower arrangements never wilted with the dawn, where the host was never to be found, and where the only memory one could possibly draw from it all was that it had been the best years of one's life, no matter how long it all was. It was an epoch apart from all others, and if it ever ended, it could never be called back through any number of nostalgic seances or afternoons spent wondering whatever happened to Vicomte So-and-So.

A deep, throttling bassline _pop_ accompanied the final note, and with that the crowd gave a great whoop at seeing the hiss of smoke from the evening's first foamy champagne bottle held over their heads, La Contessa pouring and sipping, the Hatter bowing theatrically to her, and everybody sinking back into excited chattering as they gushed full-blown into the ballroom, already tipsy with anticipation. She watched them go, a cavalcade of wealth and aigrettes and crystals and sheen. There was a sliding feeling under her right elbow and she looked up to find his ever-sunny smile and then La Contessa leaning forward to reveal herself and smile in an equally magnanimous fashion on the Hatter's right arm. Alice pulled her back very straight and let herself be guided into the room with endlessly high ceilings.

Alice was not a foolish girl; she had been to many balls before and was well-versed in the subtle machinations that society contrived to impose upon her and other young women of a certain age and class. People who threw balls—the well-to-do, those of a certain named status—often in these times repurposed a rather large drawing room for the occasion, keeping the white chairs stacked in the attic. Few had true ballrooms, tiled golden miniature palaces kept in quieted darkness for most of the year, only opened and pulled from the hush and into their high station for these peerless events. She had never the occasion to attend one like this. The orchestra was pitted rather formidably on one end, and had easily swept the couples there into a closely-timed revolving sequence of tulle and silk so that they all looked like the tiny figures in a music box on a grand scale.

"Do let's have some caviar," the Hatter was saying, "Oh, but you don't mind, do you?" Alice was already halfway through the thought of how to navigate closer to the table when she discovered that her escort for the evening and the woman in the thousand yards of pink were ten feet away and heading through the black and cream crowd to dance. "I'll be right back!" he called over his shoulder before disappearing.

Alice let her arm drop to her side and straightened her back, standing very still. This sudden retreat and leaving her alone by the punch bowl was not what she had signed up for, and not only that, it was exceedingly embarrassing and it was not—she swiftly stepped out of the tracks of a particularly zealous couple and moved with force and grace over to a table covered with strawberries and petit fours arranged in a great wedding cake of a tower. She chose one with black and white pinstripes and turned to look through the plaster moulded archway nearby, curiosity determining, no, _demanding_ that she wasn't going to hang about to feel like a sheet of the wallpapering. Alice looked over her shoulder; she couldn't even see the Hatter now, and anyway it was a rather long piece to open the dance floor—he couldn't possibly miss her, she thought. Not even a whit. She passed through it, and into a small marbled hallway, and then through a door where she could hear voices.

It was halfway into the dark room with the black-walnut moulding panels before she realized that the only light was spotlighted on a meeting or brain trust of sorts, all gathered in very dark red finial-topped chairs with a lot of hazy smoke hanging over their heads, all around a long oval playing table. The first man she saw rise was very neat, with parted black hair, a pencilled mustache, and an opera cigarette holder extending rather comically out of him, for he was very thin, and this only lent itself to further reflection on his size. The other men were very large and teardrop shaped, their mustaches neatly waxed and curled so securely at their ends that before Alice stumbled backwards through a door repeating quiet apologies, she had to press down the wondering thought of whether they would fall over if she stuck a knuckle in each loop and gave it a good tug.

But the passage she had gone through was an egress (for she certainly didn't want to go back through there), and Alice found herself at the base of an imperial staircase this time. She could hear people milling about upstairs, and followed a pair of young men up the landings. One of them was showing the other a peculiar walking stick he had, which contained inside it a long bayonet, and with a grating _shhhank_ he produced the heavy sharp blade and nearly took off his friend's ear. She passed their ensuing argument quickly, hoping to reach whatever was going on up above with her head mostly attached.

There was an odd, earthy smell at the top, and Alice followed it into a white conservatory at the roofline, one whole side of which was nothing but tall plate glass windows overlooking the blackened lake. There were no lights beyond to suggest people in their regular homes living their normal lives (whatever that meant); the forest was dark and sleeping. She hoped it was sleeping anyway, and not busying itself by devouring creatures. There was enough to do already, and here she was at a party in some grand house, and... she felt guilty for feeling guilty, which in turn felt silly. Alice sighed and went over to a long cushioned seat edged with glaxinias to taste the petit four, which turned out to be quite good, as it had buttercream inside and the pinstripes were actually part of a pleasing semi-shell of chocolate.

"Here you are," said a quiet voice, and the Hatter handed her one of the shining coupes of bubbles, "I thought you had tripped along outside, fallen into the lake and got inhaled by a shark or something." She did not reply but took the glass into her hands and watched the tiny streams of fizz that seemed to come from the glass neverending. He seated himself at the other end of the white banquette and they sat like that, in the long golden humidity of the belvedere, looking out over the lake from high up above, and Alice counted the tiny electric lights above them, strung like ship flags. She couldn't voice the complaint growing from suspicion; if he wanted to dance with someone, it was a ball and that was what people did. It was peaceable here, but for a few murmuring voices that drifted into a vague brume of distant sound. He seemed to be waiting, though.

"Your sartorial choices are along the paved path this evening. I daresay you disappoint me," said Alice after the long quiet. He looked at her and said genuinely,

"I exceed—or rather, don't quite match—your expectations of me, I gather. You thought I'd wear something... flashy, or in clashing colors, perhaps, and here I am, monochromatic all over. Your own armoire knows how to make you fetching as ever." She looked down at the swishing and roiling folds at her feet that shifted and wavered halfway between white and pale gold now.

"And you follow rules and logic so easily? You are not as mad as I thought," she said, and then reached and poked him in the shoulder teasingly before cupping both hands around the bowl of the glass.

"A small price to pay for an invitation the next year, and it certainly isn't as if I suffer," he said, shifting down the cushion so that there were only two buttons between them instead of five, "The luxurious way others are swanking about in this world, and the fact that one may easily share in that gilded light, is quite reassuring."

"And you come despite no tea to drink?" He had the cup at his lip but turned at her words and put a wrist to his forehead with a grave expression.

"How shall I withstand this horrific imposition upon my very soul? Oh that there was something else to drink," all drama, and then brightened suddenly. "Chin-chin!" said the Hatter with glee, and tipped back the glass.

Alice glanced over her shoulder at the sudden rustling noise there, and pulled back one of the large waxy leaves of the succulent only to carelessly let it whipsnap back. She turned and began a staring contest with her glass. The couple there behind their bench seemed quite engaged, and she spoke again to tone them out of mind.

"You say you get invited back every year, are you the charming wit of the night?"

"Perhaps, perhaps." She briefly considered sipping the champagne. "I've never had anyone complain that I was upright, within my boundaries, or on an even keel of a temperament. My dress is one thing, my juggling the apéritif glasses every time the head footman tries to pour is another. Sometimes the clothes don't make the man." And then he cocked his head to the side. "And that must be what surprises you, I think. You anticipate oddity, and when there is normalcy, you raise your eyebrows—it's all very amusing, you know."

"I am glad I provide you with something to chuckle over in that fashion of yours," she said with a wry look at him sideways, "And I understand that the only constant here is chaos--"

"--for which you are admirably clever. But, philosophically, isn't normalcy a part of chaos? If all you see coming is more chaos, that leads to complacency. You begin to predict nothing but surprises, and it becomes reasonable, rational, normal--those words and concepts you have such an attachment to." His tone was not unkind. "Oddments of what you understand from your life or that you find usual astonish you, perhaps, because you've adjusted. Dear girl, you've arrived," he said, and chuckled broadly, and then smacked the broad leaf behind them so hard that a high pitched squeal broke the ensuing congress, and they heard a pair of fast retreating footsteps.

"Awfully crowded up here," he said to just Alice in the conservatory, vastly amused with himself.

"I suppose so."

"You know, everyone is inside, which means that no one is outside. Do you want to see something?" Alice rose and contemplated his proffered right arm for a moment before they stepped out.

"You don't seem to much like the Duchess," said Alice quietly, swinging herself in a circle, stepping gently round one of the lampposts on the outdoor tennis courts and hoping that this was not too blunt a declaration. It was raining gently tonight, perhaps on account of there being a party, for the tinselly sound of mist on the striped canvas pavilion was sweet and pleasant.

"What do you mean by that?" He did not seem offended, merely curious as he followed her trail around the post from the ground like a horse following its trainer in circles, or to catch her fall.

"Well, I admit I assume, but she certainly does use her position to influence you. Helping me, and then her censure of your costume choice. I don't wonder at your preferring these foreign peers. She does command you."

"Does she?" The Hatter seemed struck by this idea, sounding for all as if Alice had just told him the Duchess wore sparring gloves at court.

"But I would not think that you would enjoy her ordering you about the countryside here and there—you do not seem to be of the classic feudal spirit. I imagine you a far more independent soul." He handed her down lightly and they walked arm in arm, the Hatter stepping in great leggy lengths over the net while steering Alice to its endpost.

"I am not hers to command—her demands are merely the last vestiges of reparations for past transgressions." He actually sounded tentative, diplomatic.

"Oh, is that how you've come to this arrangement? What a turn of phrase. You were in prison, that's right." She could not help but smile a bit; out in the open air it came easier again, with warmth and temerity.

"Ah, yes, there was that unfortunate stint spent under lock and key," this said with the slightest of winces. "The mark upon my brow. Deuced painful and all that," he added.

"But she did not put you there—surely she doesn't have the authority to tell you what to do?"

"We parted brass rags some time ago on the subject," he replied with sobriety.

"How dangerous and satisfying it is to be close companions with a convicted felon!" Alice said, half-joking. "Very good of you to not bend to her will." It was the principle of the thing, and here Alice, with greatly understanding appreciation for the sort of fortitude it took to stand up to royalty, found herself in concert with the Hatter, who seemed to cheer a bit on hearing this.

"Indeed, I told her something to the effect that we would meet again at Philippi—and she raised her chin as you women are wont to do, and with iron in her flashing gaze said, 'Buzz off, then, you beezer!' And I replied, "Right-ho," and heartily buzzed away." He looked absolutely delighted at the story, and Alice laughed in perfect appreciation.

"You see, I told you those books would come in handy."

"It's funny," said Alice conversationally, "I don't remember that at all. In fact, if I do recall, you declared yourself 'the most boredest man alive' when I began going through them."

"Well, you're here now, living history at its finest. Let no one say that I do not make efforts toward the proper education of today's youth." Alice smiled at him sardonically in the dim light but turned back to the large white thing at the center of the hedge maze regardless. He held the torch closer; they had picked it out of a wrought iron sconce at the entrance that didn't want to give it up, so what had started as a simple maneuver wound up involving pinched fingers and nearly singed eyebrows.

"His Imperial Highness The Argot," she repeated from his earlier pronouncement. It was a marble statute of a young man in an odd suit with a sort of obstreporous slouchy look, not exactly the regal bearing of someone she thought would have restructured the kingdom.

"This is the one who 'cleaved the lands in twain,' as they say. He only split it north and south, but there's four sections now. Every leader follows in his footsteps by overhauling the government just as it's gotten settled down and we're all used to it, I think just to keep things zesty."

"What's out past the Wonderland?" she said. The Hatter reached up and began to rub at something in his eye.

"Oh, not much. Swamps, I think, or something. Anyway, there's our first great ruler in statuary form. What a riot he was. The history books always describe him standing at the top viewing window where the crowds came to bask in his glory. He would just stand there yelling, so people didn't bother with respectful silence or anything like that. I think most of his political speeches involved reading off the costermonger's bill for the palace. Very inspired."

"I see. And how does your friend, La Contessa, how is she involved in all of this?"

"Oh, she's among these foreigners. That was all him, he let them build here. This whole estate is a bit of an embassy, one might call it, a safehaven for the sort of rot we all get up to at these wingdings."

"I thought you said they didn't speak English—everyone here just has a funny accent."

"Oh, that. They can't write in English for anything, but they picked up on the speaking, double-quick."

"What sort of an accent is that, anyway?"

"An indescribable one, I think." He was looking into the clouds as he spoke.

"Who is she?"

"Who?"

"La Contessa."

"She's very kind."

"Well, yes," said Alice a bit stilted, "But who is she?" He wrinkled his nose at this and seemed to have a growing suspicion that it was a trick question.

"A... foreign... peer?"

"No, no." Now he stared at her blankly. "How do you know her?"

"Oh." And there was a pause, but Alice couldn't really understand his expression in the contrast of shadow and light. "People get around to these parties, you know. They all wind up being the same lot if you don't start bringing in fascinating outsiders for everybody to speculate over." Alice felt distinctly that she wasn't really getting anywhere with this, much like a lot of other things she was trying to get on with. _Running in circles and getting nothing done except a party, _she thought, and then pushed the guilt down and wondered if it was learning to float. Could guilt be drowned?

"What is she like?" she said after another pause in which he shifted his weight on the correspondingly crunching gravel. "Besides kind," she was quick to add. He looked up and over at the hedges surrounding and she watched a diffused glow from the flame in his farside hand come softly round to the broad freckled cheek she was closest to. He was so serious, it was almost comical, him with a complexion like a boy in knickerbockers.

"Maternal," he said finally. They two were quiet for a moment.

Alice took the still-warm tailcoat he had given her in the slight mist from about her shoulders and held it out for him, not in a handful of limp cloth, but by the collar and with both armholes at the ready, and he stooped to awkwardly backward into it, having to eventually stuff the torch's point into The Argot's open coat pocket. They both slowly smoothed out the coat, and then she took his arm again and they went back into the party through the portico door.

Alice and the Hatter hung back near the archway, waiting to step into the criss-crossing lines and splendid grid of whirling couples, carefully timing their entry as they would if standing on the curb of a heavily trafficked road, and he put her arm about her waist and they waltzed like that, right along with everyone else to the Imperial sound. He spun them both as one in concentric twirls across the dance floor, for the orchestra played _Wein, Weib Und Gesang_ just as though some Empress herself was about to enter from the broad-side staircase to lead the whole of the party in some charming new boxstep. There was plenty of room, and they eventually weren't even waltzing, just sliding on their soles, sometimes catching their feet perfectly, sometimes tripping over each other and stumbling, laughing. Her skirts flipped over on themselves and she caught them out the side of her eye, just a flash of white somewhere over there like she was chasing herself, just out of reach around bending corners of a maze.

"Where did you get those earrings?" he said as he leaned slightly over and looked just a tilt up into her face. The golden light from the chandelier was making his eyes an odd navy color instead of their uncanny aqua. Alice raised her hand to her ear and fiddled with the hook a bit awkwardly, having extricated her arm from where he had it gently pinned under his own to lead her off the floor.

"Oh, they weren't terribly dear, they are awfully small," she said. It had been his money, after all.

"Diamonds, that's nice," he said. "Very lucky, you know."

"Lucky that I found them?"

"They _are_ lucky, they bring luck," he said, and gently brushed her earlobe with his glove-tipped thumb to have a better look at its white fire, putting his fingers in a row along her neck beneath that.

"I'm starving," said Alice softly, turning, and started toward a table nearby, where tiny iridescent colors beamed up in oily rainbows from the inner shells of half-oysters. She had sometimes wondered why their secret white sides were so beautiful when they were never really meant to see the light of day—so exquisite and colorful, and never intended to be caught and prised open. Well, but here was a delight and a delicacy; she raised one and had it when she turned and saw his expression.

He was standing exactly where she had left him, his arms folded over his middle and with a look of absolute revolted horror. He even seemed slightly offended. Alice was just furrowing her brow and tilting her head to ask him what was wrong when she remembered the mollusk in her mouth and swallowed quickly. The lingering taste was much worse than she remembered from the usual smooth one motion tilt-and-gulp, and flapping her hand at the table, managed to grab a nearby glass of champagne and bolt the whole thing to subsume the taste—it was tart and drying and sweet, and the flavor mixed well.

Alice recovered, feeling the fizz embrace against her tongue, and looked up a bit sheepishly, finding him with a clear expression. _Well, I should certainly hope so, _it said. _That's what you get_.

"What's wrong?" she called, for he would not venture near the table, and instead forced her in a roundabout way to come to him.

"What do you mean, what's wrong? How on earth can you possibly do that?" He had wrinkled one side of his nose as if her very presence rendered her toxic to him.

"Do you not like oysters or something?" He shifted a bit and looked annoyed, though not with her.

"No," he declared. "They're awful." Alice went back to the table and brought them near, but it was like holding up a jellyfish with a knife and a festered grudge as far as he was concerned, the way he bent back away from it, the whites of his eyes coming out.

"Look, they're wonderful." And she tipped it back.

"That's disgusting," he moaned, "Why are you doing this to me?"

"But it's not the shells," she told him, "It's what's inside. You don't eat the shells." She offered it again. "Come on, it's not that bad—whoever heard of eating shells, anyway? This isn't prison." He was beginning to have an expression she didn't have a name for—something like a cross between sulky irritation and growing curiosity. "Don't you want to be luxe?" she said, talking sweet, and held out the other oyster.

After the Hatter had finished his third chaser of champagne they wandered back out onto the side of the floor opposite the oyster table, where she took his hand and murmured soothing commentary on everyone else while they danced, but never approached anything like an apology, as she felt it would just indulge him a bit too well. He had enjoyed the champagne, after all, and his mood shimmered into cheerful clarity as they observed and were observed alike.

There was a man wearing a dressing gown over a rumpled tuxedo who swaggered about in the most bumptious fashion, eyeballing everyone with an up-down, up-down gaze. The rumor around the ice statute of a monkey in a fez, which was surrounded by toast points and slathery smears of softening cheese, was that he was a prince of sorts, but if he were, he took no care in introducing himself to anyone, but everyone seemed to know him anyway, for they gave him quite a large berth when he ambled too near the orchestra and decided that the piano bench would be the perfect spot for a bit of a lie-down, and they wound up dancing three waltzes and a polka without the instrument. One of the footmen passed among the couples bearing a tray of champagne, and they found they could dance without losing a drop, and so Alice had two more glasses besides.

She felt, of a sudden, rather terribly Viennese, and Alice knew somehow that tonight was going to be a very good night.

It is a difficult thing to get drunk on champagne unless you're really having a go at it. Alice did not have this sweet bubbling epiphany of a thought until she rolled over so that the breadth of her cheek was full against the cool black and white tiles on the balustrade above the grand palais ballroom in a house somewhere in... somewhere. She couldn't remember all of a sudden because the cockeyed way the beautiful lovely heads and dresses down below spun from her angled vantage point between the stair railings became incredibly amusing, and she lay there laughing in a melodious passage _vivace con brio_ until her cheek was wet with tears.

_Being_ drunk on champagne is another thing entirely: people don't stagger about, slurring their words in a fashion unbecoming of the going members of a fabulous ball. There is a curious dignified grace or style to it, a foaming fizzing way of finding everything amusing, of floating out on the waves of the Blue Danube Waltz and finding the shore somewhere between a trick snooker shot and the third seafood course at the late dinner table. One might compare it to oiling a frozen lock with a feather—there is a squeak, a budge, and then the world is shiny and well-lubricated, and everything flows smoothly, even if one doesn't remember the exact sequence of things in the morning. The night becomes a montage, hazily pieced together sequences of sound and sight at a clipping pace that may or may not match up.

Alice was speaking in round affected tones of Mayfair and Kensington, almost like there was a stutter in time and they had jumped forward to a punchline.

"Then I'm sure it was a... _root awakening_," and instead of polite high-pitched laughter from the croquet court, she and the Hatter both paused before bursting into peals of genuine, honest laughter, punctuated at least twice by some heady and completely unladylike snorts from Alice herself, which the Hatter found, for his part, terribly charming. The bottle closest to Alice tipped and rolled with a low rumble too close near the balcony, and when she gave a dramatic heave to go after it, it set them out both to another round of helpless giggling. They were bent over on themselves, and when the Hatter had got it all out and Alice was finally straightened, rosy at the roots of her hair and glistening at the eyes, they sobbed a few last sobs in a duet and sighed at last, effervescent in their blood and happy.

"Really, you minx, you have to stop," he said in a thick voice rimmed with the threat of more laughter, "I'm never going to finish this." He had long since lost his tails and was making an admittedly faithful reproduction of the Eiffel Tower out of spent agraffes (and he had quite a stock to pick from, it was almost shocking) and was halfway through with the second deck. "I shall have to tell the March Hare that one, and he will laugh. I think he will, anyway—we should wake him up and see what he says."

"I thought he'd left by now." She was tugging at her opera gloves—an unfortunate move, since she would lose them later in the night.

"No, the rain's got the road lines all mushy and washed out or something. He's leaving tomorrow week."

"Mmm." Alice leaned on one of her elbows to get a better look at the Hatter's engineering of the little replica. She had left her fan somewhere, and it took her a few moments to realize that she wasn't sitting as closely to the Hatter as the heat he seemed to generate suggested. Perhaps she was overtired and warm from the drink, and then wondered what time it was. She was feeling a bit sentimental and nostalgic toward her bed.

"I don't mean to sound rude, but out of curiosity, when do these parties usually end?" She was rummaging around in his waistcoat pocket, trying to find a watch. He pulled out the chain and she popped it open. It was about as late as she thought.

"End?"

"Yes, when does everyone go home?" She tugged on the chain and he smiled kindly in reply.

"Everyone goes home when the party ends. If you don't mind a bit of wisdom, a good ball can go on for days, depending on the sporting. Things don't really start until the back gaming rooms open." She watched him twist together the little spiderweb of tincoil. "Anyway, it's better to stay late, as that's when people get really interesting." He added a hunk of metal to the southern leg.

"Where did you learn to do all that?"

"Do all what?"

"You make hats, you build scale models of buildings, you wake up in fountains--"

"That wasn't my fault!" he cried, but with a bit of a laugh. "It was that Count, who is a premier fiend in human form! Sometimes I feel the urge to step on him, or drop things on him from a height."

"Mmm, like a grand piano?" said Alice, watching the couples dance again. "What a morbid thing that would be, wouldn't it? To be smashed into tiny pieces by a falling musical instrument."

"Splat," concluded the Hatter with all respect due to someone who had indirectly broken his favorite pocketwatch. "You'd be knee-deep in the bisque then." He had his long, long legs stretched out on either side of the little metal sculpture, a great big child at exceedingly sophisticated play, and his trousers had hiked up enough that she could see dark blue and black checked socks at his shoes. He was so intently concentrated, so charming in wanting to get all the details just right, the way he fiddled with a single piece, over and over.

"How shall I do the Edoux lifts?" he murmured to himself. "Hmm, hmm, hmm."

"Well, then, I suppose I must stay to see these games you're so on about," said Alice.

"As you should!" he cried, "There's nothing better than when the gloves come off and the games come out."

The whole house was playing at a treasure hunt of some kind, going through every room and turning it inside out for secrets, for a list of oddities to exchange with others for a prize.

Alice jerked open the drawer in a long fluid pull from her elbow, intent on gleefully spilling the contents across the parquet floor to display her elation at having found the only room in the house that hadn't already been ransacked in pursuit of twittish upperclass entertainment, but before she could finish the action, the intensity of the burning smoulder within made her draw near. The yellow glow, which seemed to come from the object within, even in the dark room, shone onto her face and cast Alice's fair eyes, wide with an almost hypnotized fascination, a hazy shade of green. She blinked and bent slightly to read the inscriptionκαλλίστη engraved there, blackened in the shine's wake. Her fingers were nearly around the round hard object when someone was calling her.

"Come on!" cried the Hatter from the doorway, his tie now undone, "They've found the music box and the sturgeon; we have to hurry or they'll win!" And then he was dragging her away from the beautiful drawer and into the hallway, where Alice grabbed her skirts and followed gracefully after him down the twisted staircase, her mind already onto other things, the discord which events had begun to set in motion held at bay for just a few more turns of the clock.

It was forty-five after the hour, and Alice sat up with a sudden intake of air upon hearing Westminster Quarters. A girl with a tucker full to bursting of violets had found the lampshade and won the prize, which turned out to be a lemon meringue dessert.

"What were we talking about?"

"Hmm?"

"Were we talking about something?"

"Oh, that was ages ago," said the Hatter, who seemed to be folding a rather complex admiral's hat out of several sheets of newspaper. "But yes, no, we were talking of the difference between Doges and Freiherr—I think we decided that the whole thing didn't matter because both of the ones who happen to be here are quite ugly, and you were giving a rather nice dissertation on why you like mousse pudding better than jelly when you fell asleep."

"I wasn't asleep," she replied. But she wasn't sure.

Alice let herself drop back down—there was too much gravity where she was, for some reason—and looked at him where he sat with legs outstretched on the floor making careful bone-edged creases, and then began to calculate her own position without moving. She was lying on some sort of couchette, and he appeared to be on the wall from this view. What struck her after several moments was how oddly crisp he seemed—the unruffled smoothness of the way he had rolled his sleeves—compared to her relative state of disarray, which she guessed at and confirmed when she unstuck a wilted lock of hair from her cheek.

"Well?" he said finally.

"Hmm?"

"Why do you like mousse pudding better than jelly?"

"Because it's delicious," said Alice, "Aren't you tired?" Her voice seemed unable to permeate the incredible sleepiness of the room, which had a lot of gold leafed elephants wearing palanquins on the walls, now that she looked at it.

"I don't sleep," he replied cheerily. "Don't you remember?" Did she? She thought about it for a moment. He stood and donned the large hat. "GOOSE ATTACKS RISIN—" said the headline above his ear. "Right," said the Hatter, and held out his hand. Alice did not rise, but clambered.

"What are we doing?"

"Your motivation is thus: you're the princess who's been taken hostage by pirates, and the Royal Navy is come to save you."

"Oh, we're onto another one--" Suddenly, a trio of men who were probably earls or dukes or something came bursting all at once through the open door wearing piratey-looking lampshades on their heads, having lost their tailcoats and collars at some point during a foray and brandishing the following: half a bedpost, an eggbeater, and what looked like a cocktail strainer--but Alice could not be sure about that last one. Soon joining their ranks was a tall, olive-complected woman who was about to fall over under the weight of her diamond-encrusted headdress.

"ARRGH!" cried one of them, who could not see through his makeshift headgear and promptly slammed into the door before becoming aquainted with the floor in a friendly way. The man holding the cocktail strainer lifted the shade from his brow and scowled down at his prostrate cohort.

"Hang it, man, I say, _get up_, we'll never get the cookbook back from that fortune teller if we don't kidnap a princess." He said it as only a puffed up, half-dressed, mostly juiced aristocrat possibly can, that is to say, with a stertorous drawl. There was a pause, and the man who spoke looked at the Hatter, who had two fingers tucked inside his waistcoat in a very dignified naval fashion. "Right? Is that right? Oh, dash it all, I've already forgot. Bloody games," he muttered as he and the other man stumbled over their comrade and down the hall. The woman in the headdress soon joined the man on the floor.

Now it was so late that the clock had stopped chiming the hours, and a ballet corps had quite suddenly appeared in the ballroom, above which on the landing Alice and the Hatter sat at their usual congressional headquarters, dangling their legs from the balcony and watching several baronets join the leggy company in a clumsy, crashing mockery of a kickline. The girls were doing their best, but the men with jiggling bellies and dandered-up handlebar mustaches were more concerned with whether they were sloshing champagne across their flipped shirtfronts than whether they were in unison. The Hatter was holding an empty bottle of the stuff at a tilt, looking up into it to see if there was anything left and looking a bit disappointed that there was no rush of bubbles into his face. He didn't even have to look at the men below to make a diagnosis.

"Bunch of consummate old asses." She laughed reflexively and dove into it too fast; it was a bit too funny, and there was a pause while she checked herself, trying not to cry.

"You have strong opinions about the ballet." Tears had already sprung up, and she blinked and tried not to set off giggling again.

"I'd be the majestic bird of paradise. Nobody is more alive than I am to the fact that I've got gorgeous legs a mile long." He swung his feet back and forth as if to demonstrate them to their greatest advantage. Alice leaned back slightly and looked at him—he was awfully big, now that she thought about it. Not fat or thin, some strange in between. Her face only came up to the roundoff of his shoulder, even sitting here like this next to him, practically reclined. She looked down at the dancers with their tall plumed marabou headdresses, who were madly, wildly hoofing about the tiling all in time with each other, bouncing all in a flock. The earls had still not caught up to the beat, and one had collapsed to the floor while another ministered champagne—they were both laughing.

"If you're so good, you should go and join them."

"I am good, but I'm not leaving you," he replied with a laugh, "Not with those stockings on." Alice looked at him, startled, and turned to find that one of her limbs had snuck out to flash blue and cream in the candlelight. They were the stockings she'd bought at the clothier—stockings were all white and always had been, but these, these were lovely pale colors to wear under a gown, never to be seen, never for anyone to know about that kind of secret purchase. There was something vaguely... French about them that she liked. Some silent excess she had admired modestly in the mirror while dressing.

"_Those_ were never meant to see the light of day," he declared. "And you of all people going about in such a provocative fashion—I should say this party is a success," and intended to follow this up with a toast of sorts, but once again found the champagne bottle empty.

"They haven't," Alice said a bit archly, "We're in candlelight, and anyway, it's not like anyone is lucid enough to even realize." Still, she moved to cover the filmy vertical blocks of color with the long white train. He replied with his usual absurd chuckle.

"One of these Cavaliers will be after you if I don't play sentry, you know. This is a completely true fact." He went on, as if telling an epic story. "He's ever so lonely, and you're positively sublime in this light, or any light, really, with your hair in a soft halo of curls, and the way your dress flows from you like waves off some nereid never to be caught, and he's been ogling you from behind the waterfall all night, collecting up the liquid courage to come over and stammer at you in all your winsome charm." Alice was only half-listening to him as he looked out over the expanse of the room; in this light the fleshed-out curve of his mouth was rather fascinating to watch when he spoke. He had a strange habit of starting to say something else when he paused, but then he would reconsider, so the very top part of his lip moved almost reflexively, unconsciously, with some words he was thinking but wouldn't say.

"Soon he'll have you cornered in one of the back gaming rooms--" and here Alice opened her mouth to voice a bit of outrage, but he raised a glove palm to go on, "And be on his knees begging your beauteous mercy to accept an offer. You'll be coquettish behind your fan, have a toast, go through his entire fortune at the roulette wheel, and then you'll both be honor-bound and stranded at some awful pokey cottage out in the middle of nowhere with a coke fireplace," she was giggling so hard she could hardly breathe and he was laughing now, "Broke, busted, disgusted, and miserable in a canvas apron while he stares broodingly out the window all day, wondering if he should pawn his pocketwatch and head for parts unknown to bathe in _aqua pura_ and leave you relieved at not having to put your hair up every day out of lingering formality." He ended nearly out of breath after all this. Alice looked up and composed herself, and said in her most falsely serious voice,

"I'm so glad we have these conversations, otherwise I think I might wind up actually settled, or even worse, returned safely home and happily reunited with my family." He waved a dismissive hand, but before he could retort, there seemed to be a reshuffling of the parties below, and they both leaned over to see what had attracted so many people.

Somewhere, a voice was singing something soft and low and sweet that she couldn't understand, appealing to the gathering almost plaintively. The beautiful aristocrats below, even after their strange vulgar displays, were moving about the floor as if in a dream, blindfolded, reaching out tentatively. Kissing each other, everyone and everywhere. Alice's heart felt exhausted suddenly, and she wondered if she'd been just a bit too loud this evening, running up and down the stairs for no reason, and watched them from high up above on the balcony.

"He's asking them to be as brothers and sisters in humanity," said the Hatter, but Alice kept watching the people down below. A woman in black and gold brushed her hands against a young man's collar, and he dipped his head low to inelegantly brush lips with her. Her throat hurt, her palms twinged—what an odd practice, almost obscene in such an open display of crossed boundaries, yet so intimate that no one could possibly know, wandering as they all were, indiscriminate, a paradox of public and private. Alice felt as if she were ten miles from them, looking through an inverted spyglass, watching them pantomime something foreign.

She couldn't look at him, and so instead when she turned to ask _why_, she looked at a spot beyond, past the curvy upturn of his nose, and instead found him with a far, far gaze, not looking at anything before she focused on his face and he turned and looked at her. _Something in the air_, she thought. There was a curious pattern of freckles above his left eyebrow, and then Alice felt that tremendous vent of heat too near her, even though he wasn't that close. Or was he; was he leaning toward her? She couldn't tell, his face was filling up the room around them so that she could study his freckles and the curve of his mouth faithfully, and she could see the rise and fall of his breath in his entire being, and there was a bang below so big, so monstrous, that she could hear glass shattering and a few surprised short screams.

"What _are _they doing down there," said the Hatter, and rose and disappeared. Alice looked again—one of the gentlemen had pulled the blade from the walking stick and _sabraged_ the top of one of the green bottles, exploding it with dramatic flair and sending a lady nearby into a paroxysm of scolding, yelling at him in a language she couldn't catch. Apparently he had taken a slice out of her bouffant. Alice didn't stay on the balcony long after that.

There was an odd change of things putting her to a whisper of nervousness. Perhaps everyone was too tired, having spent so many lasting hours under the same roof, putting themselves on display and going through the gestures of polite society. It wasn't as subtle as before, and it wasn't clear enough for her to tell what was happening, but Alice detected it in the way people were talking, the slosh of drink, the footmen fast asleep against the doorways. Above all, she couldn't find the Hatter again, and she couldn't tell if bumbling about the villa into random rooms was helping or hindering.

Moving through the halls, she followed the sound of warbling voices and found the great breadth of the kitchen, where a startling mixture of people had gathered to clash with the floor, collars undone, plumes adrift, filled glasses aloft, and in she walked to the midst of their forceful singing, launching headfirst into the hills and dales of the song, like a great carnival:

_--would waltz with a strawberry blonde,_

_As the band played on._

_He'd glide cross the floor with the girl he adored,_

_As the band played on._

_But his brain was so loaded it nearly exploded,_

_The poor girl would shake with alarm._

_He'd ne'er leave the girl with the strawberry curls,_

_As the band played on._

It was a bright, amusing tune, but their rendition was almost cruel, sarcastic. As Alice reached the door again, she heard a young girl say to another next to her as she held up two identical bottles,

"Do you think this smells like almonds? It smells so bitter, I've never heard of this stuff smelling like almonds before."

"Oh, I'm sure it's fine," said her friend, who rolled her eyes and rejoined the chorus.

Alice peered into a room papered with golden octopi looping their tentacles together across the wall, where a bridge game was going on. The women there were gathered about the card table watching the four at hand, and the general mood was just a bit predatory. She guessed them to be playing high, and she was right. There was a triple strand of pearls carefully looped into a tight swirl around an emerald for the pot, and the players had removed their gloves and sapphire rings, gently sipping from the clear coupes set near their wrists and eyeing it in what they thought were devious, undetected looks.

"Oh," sighed North, whose dark golden locks were shaped into a pincushion updo, "I'm not sure." She looked at the girl with the brown ringlets across the table and gently mocked her partner. "Keeping your bid?" South nodded a bit. "Really?"

"I think she's lying to us," said the young woman with the bright silver hair sitting at East. West had dark bronze hair; they seemed to be twins except for their garish, almost costumish, hair colors.

"Ow!" shrieked West suddenly. She had been fiddling with her hairdo and came away with bright red fingertips, the blood dripping onto the baize table in a soft splatter.

"What happened?" said East, snapping her cards onto the table as the observers clustered about her sister, wondering aloud whether they should call for a doctor.

"Stabbed myself on the end of that ivory hairpin—could've taken a finger off, those things are vicious..." They continued their concerned discussion, which ended with a handkerchief and careful staunching, but no one gave the dark spots on the table a second look. North leaned forward and spoke quietly to South, but Alice could not hear her.

"Well, don't blame me, it's no one's fault but your own!" East was shouting at West.

"You'll just have to trust me," replied South. Alice looked over the girl's shoulder at the spades grand slam and with a smooth expression left the room.

Eventually Alice found herself back in the room with the dark panelling and red chairs, this time finding not the brain trust but a poker game in progress. There were none of the teardrop shaped men, but the prince in the dressing gown was looking terribly bored where he sat between a man in a turban and a man with heavy, dark eyelids. The Hatter was sitting in a casting shade of too-white white under the lamp; his disheveled hair and his collar undone mixing together made him difficult to look at. She rested her hand over the back of his chair and observed the play, and when he turned his head to look back over at her, his face thrust into the darkness and she could see he was beginning to look tired and wan too. Where had he been? The marquis in the green visor dealt, and the Hatter picked up the nine of diamonds, and then he pulled double Aces and eights.

The Hatter turned the cards over and rose, and when they reached the hallway, Alice said,

"I've been looking everywhere for you. Have you been in there the entire time? That wasn't _that_ bad of a hand." But he was looking around with a curious kind of energy, wiggling his hands in his pockets, brow furrowed.

"I'll be right back," he said, and was gone for the third time that evening.

If the change in the air had been subtle before, it was a detectable taste now, and beginning to overpower. Alice wasn't really worried about the commotion in the front hall until she got there and had to stare for a few moments to comprehend what she was seeing. One of the men in the fine black and white suits had a set of knives in his hand, throwing them underhand with aplomb and a grim, mocking laugh, at the brass chain between the medallion in the ceiling and the large chandelier. He laughed, and there was a distant _thunk_, and he laughed again, spinning them like it was a game of Russian roulette. The tall woman in the too-large crystal headdress was talking at him in another language, and then reached up to her neck and wrenched on the choker there. A white exploding cascade of pearls, mythological tears, came away from her throat, giant white drops of blood, and the woman watched them backspin along the tile. Alice turned to back out, and was nearly bowled over by a man pulling one of the young women along by her hair, who had removed a steel hairpin and was swiping at him dangerously.

"Mulct me out of five clam like that," he was saying. The lady replied somewhat emotionally to the effect that she hated him, she had always hated him, and she hoped he hated her too, and the pair disappeared through an archway.

There was so much noise, a great wall of it come down to spoil the golden haze; the sounds of the party had evaporated and been replaced with the upswing ructions of chaos, come suddenly with a roar and a bang. There were voices upstairs, and voices downstairs, arguing and yelling in a din, and then she started to hear the sound of smashing china, pitched at heads but hitting the walls and the floors, vases and plates and everything tumbling down.

Alice couldn't think in the madness. How had these nice people turned on each other suddenly? Where was the host, where were the police to calm them down? Was there any sense of order to _be_ restored? What had happened to their pact of humanity? She felt like the only person in the whole world who could possibly be sane. She went through a doorway, and another doorway, and then turned and ran out of that doorway, for she could hear someone crying hysterically nearby, and then Alice turned and found the Hatter pressed up against the wall next to the doorjamb, his hair white, his shirt white, palms splayed against the wall, his face very pale and almost gray, taking methodical breaths. One of his shirtsleeves was coming unrolled. He looked at her.

"We have to leave," he said, his voice hoarse and grave. And he began striding. Alice waited there to see if he would come back, wondered how everything had descended into... insanity. She slowed as this revealed itself. How silly it was, to think normalcy had any place in even the grandest houses in the Wonderland. The gunshot report was all it took to move her, though, and Alice kept thinking _We are all mad here, we are all mad here_...

If you see Alice in your mind's eye, flying down the low-angled front staircase of the villa, her skirts blown out from behind her in a long train, running steps rhythmic, her form gracefully urgent, her expression anxious and sober, the comparison between her and a princess whose time at the ball has run out ends when Alice's court shoes reached the gravel drive. She awoke then, and turning, saw the place lit with a strange haze; was it the foggy mist in the air, or was the house on fire? There was a fantastic crash, and the lights flickered once, the chandelier having been felled at last. The Hatter had reached one of the lit torches, and she could see him making wide gestures and heard him. Talking to himself.

"Got to go back there, not my fault this all got started like this, but it is my fault in the grandest way, but where do I go? Where do I go? Do I go there first? I've got to get home, I just need to get back..." She listened to him for a moment. It wasn't a word salad, but he was just there, talking to himself, sometimes loud enough for her to hear, and balling his hands into fists, flexing them out and balling them up, nervous tension and anxiety. "They can't find it, though, it is hidden, I should go and get it, I should get it and smash it up, smash it right up," she heard him say, "They're coming across the water, and then it'll be like it was before..."

When she managed to catch up, she said,

"Where are you going?" a bit too loudly, breathing a bit too hard. He was walking too fast, and got away from her again when she stopped to recover. "You left your tailcoat in there, aren't you going to get it?" she cried out, but he kept going, and she did not catch up with him until the lights were faded behind them at last and the door in the tree was closing, and even when they got out of the other side, he did not turn to look at her until she grabbed his shoulder and would not let go.

"...race to the bottom, this is so far gone, I didn't _do_ that, that's not, that's not, that's not me, I mean--"

"What are you doing, what's going on?!" The Hatter stopped the stream of consciousness and turned and stared at Alice in the depth of the night, and she could see that he was surprised—had he not thought that she would follow him?

"You can't come with me," said the Hatter, clearly, slowly.

"What do you mean? Where are you going?"

"You can't come with me." He started to pace, and continued his monologue. Talking, arguing with himself, voicing every thought that raced through him, no more filtering out of societal obligation. Alice felt a strong cool wind come up through the trees, and with it the realization that he was what he was known for all long. Mad. Delusional. Paranoid. Those were words she could attribute to the people in horrible institutions, gray blocks of penury where minds slipped out the window and bodies got left behind. He started talking again, first loud and then soft, no control over the words, running his hands through his hair and rubbing his eyes and shaking, though it wasn't something she would expect a lunatic in a white jacket to do; he was just working a bit too fast, his brain was sped up, there wasn't _that_ much wrong with him, was there?

"I've had a long, strange life," he said quietly, almost to himself, almost to no one. "And I hope that when you think of me, years from now, you can think of something good, something good, something good." He put a hand over his mouth to stop them from tumbling out again and paced, back and forth, back and forth.

"What did you do," said Alice tersely. "You're acting like you've murdered somebody; what did you do while you were gone?" He wheeled around, took three steps, and was upon her.

"_Nothing_," he said, and he was so fierce and vivid that Alice began to take a step backward. "I didn't do _anything_, and when they ask you, tell them the truth." She paused.

"When who ask me?"

"The gendarmes, the crown guard," he said, looking all around the clearing as if they were surrounded.

"There's no one else here, we're the only ones." And then the Hatter did something strange. He laughed in an odd way, but it was mirthless and stilted and sounded more like a high-pitched hiccup, and he clapped a hand over his mouth and closed his eyes until it went away and was replaced by a dry, parenthetical smile of what was perhaps resignation.

"They will be," he said so quietly she came close to him again, not quite coming up to his shoulder but perhaps she could rest her cheek in the curve of his sternum. He folded his arms in a hug around himself and Alice honestly wondered if he would lash out if she tried to touch him. The clouds broke suddenly for the half-moon, and then so did he, a strange calm lucidity coming over him so fast that he looked young and pale and lost.

"I'm so sorry about all this," he said in a whisper. She was going to reply, demand what in all the worlds he was talking about, when he thumbed her earlobe again and spoke in a dry, dull voice. "You lost your earring. They didn't bring you much luck, did they?" He was leaving, he was forming up the words to tell her goodbye or something. Alice couldn't think of anything coherent to say—what did people say in situations like this?

"But where are you going?"

"I have to leave."

"Leave, but you're the only person around here who's any help whatever, you can't just leave. Don't you remember? The Duchess told you, you're supposed to stay here," she trailed off.

"You're not going to be alone," he said firmly.

"You're _insane_, this is absolutely absurd, you haven't done anything--_"_

"Listen," he said, bending down eye to eye with her and she had to look at him, it was embarrassing to be that close, but so serious. "You're going to have to do this alone. I can't tell you where to go, there are too many places, you're going to have to figure it out."

"How--"

"Don't," he said in a perfectly even low voice, "tell her anything. _Cherchez la femme_," said the Hatter, and then she knew he would leave.

He leaned forward slightly and this time their mouths caught.

A first kiss is a strange thing. In a fantasy against the foggy backdrop of a romantic bridge or crashing ocean, the hero grabs his heroine with a sudden jerk (for perhaps she has been resisting him for some time and has recently finished an eloquent and dramatic speech to the effect of not wanting anything to do with him) by the shoulders, bends her back in his arms and assumes control over her as she is powerless to do anything but weaken in his embrace and emerge breathless and deeply in love, already wondering if the token bauble is in his breast pocket. The proverbial fireworks mark their echoed reports in the skies beyond, and the romantic tension between the pair is at last released, validating them like a swelling theme song as all the problems in the world fade in the wake of their new love together, for they are sure to exit stage right arm in arm, together at last, their story coming to an end. It is a common and beautiful ideal, to be sure. But this story is not done.

Even the smallest kiss, the lightest and quickest gesture of affection can turn the world on its pivot when executed, one may note. A grand gesture is meaningless when something so simple carries a true and honest weight. And so Alice found herself brushing open lips for only a moment with someone who did not have his arms squeezing her tightly to his lapel, or mashing his face against hers with the intensity and application of someone tenderizing meat, and instead so lightly, with bittersweet ardor. He did not have his arms about her--they were neither of them touching at all but for that singular, transient flashpoint, in fact, and despite the lack of romantic surroundings one may hope for in such instances, dear reader, Alice would find herself, in days afterward, staring at nothing with a knot between her eyebrows and her arms wrapped round her, recalling the simultaneous closeness and distance of his entire being, stunned at how her memory had carved out such a particular space to purposely slow and stretch and revisit mere seconds of life.

Let us not mince words for the sake of Alice. The dip and curve of his philtrum was just hinted at the top of his lip, that upside-down bow, and it was there that she could feel the dimensions of him, not just a flat drawing or a caricature but the axis of him, the depth and texture and the way both their lips gave under the elastic light pressure, loose, not firm or agitated or tensed into a pair of battering rams. It was a lazy, relaxed, enjoyable kind of thing, and it felt like waking up in the morning in loose loops of bedclothes and cushions and sunlight, no reason at all to put her feet on the floor, but the overwhelming urge like a weight on her chest to stay there, molded into a perfect concave impression of Alice, and never go. It marveled her, this ounce of flesh so designed, finer and more delicate than even the fragile, ladylike porcelain white skin on the inside of her arm, imbued with so much capacity for feeling that it seemed a true detriment, not having thrown reason into the wind before. Kisses, you understand, are not stationary, except perhaps when we bestow upon others endearment by the dry, prosaic outer lip. When kisses become an expression of bonding fielty, a strange kind of genuflection, they are a kinesis of lips and mouth and flesh, holistic, that inner part sweet and curved, mouthing unspeakable words in silence.

Alice vaguely felt perhaps he were drawing some thin chain of memory out of her, over and over, breaking and recovering each link, drawing something from her nerves and warmth to have and remember, and tasting the strange unknowable spark of life moving just beneath that she could feel sometimes late at night when the world was quiet. She held her breath when he exhaled as he gently pulled away and then she finally breathed and suddenly flooded once more with blood, releasing it pouring in erratic waves from her heart and back into every corner of her before the vertiginous drop afterward and the pounding ancient grey and blue patterns obscuring her eyes. Words ran through her consciousness and they were hot and ripe and Alice came so close to leaning in further and just pressing her cheek along the concave depth of where the man's neck met his collar and staying there until she could process rational thought once more, which she felt somewhere in the clouded pulsing back of her skull would be never again. All this in such a small time; had there been minutes not moments, she could not allow for. She began to hear something distant and she felt his sad sigh against her own mouth like some new breath of life, humid and reassuring and raising every fine hair on its end straining to meet him again and he spoke very quietly at her cheek.

"Look after the hat." He had changed his mind about something, she could hear it in the tone of his voice.

"You wouldn't leave your hat here," said something that sounded like Alice's voice, her head only catching up a few seconds later. "You wouldn't, you wouldn't leave it behind. You wouldn't do that." He sighed again without looking at her, but instead somewhere past her ear into the darkness of the forest, and said simply,

"Keep it safe."

And then he stepped away, taking all the warmth with him and leaving a swirl of cold autumn air in his wake, and other footsteps and voices grew closer, and she saw his white collar fade between the trees, disappearing to wherever the future lay.

It was only when the guard reached the treeline, shouting and pointing and ignoring her, that Alice released her balled up fists from their stiff, pained clench and ran the turgid half-globes of her fingertips in the darkness over the dim shadowy crescents her nails had incised into the flesh.


	14. Chapter 14

The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

_The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_

In what concerns you much, do not think that you have companions: know that you are alone in the world.

Henry David Thoreau

* * *

"Even after she nibbled some of the lefthand mushroom, she walked up towards the March Hare's house a bit timidly, saying to herself _Suppose it should be raving mad after all! I almost wish I'd gone to see the Hatter instead!_"

"Well, I'm glad she didn't," said Alice's older sister from the port side before anyone could say anything.

"Oh?" said the older reverend from where he was making a heave and lean, heave and lean motion with the oars. "What makes you say that?"

"I've seen the hatters in town," she continued—a bit snottily, Alice thought, but perhaps Alice hoped for it, to have something to blame for the story's interruption. "How small they become, needing someone else to sell their hats for them because of the state they get into."

"I am sure they do what they can," offered the older reverend.

"What do you mean?" said Alice's younger sister. "What's wrong with them?"

"_Mad, bad, and dangerous to know_," said her sister on the other side.

"Why?" said the other again.

"Because they're hatters," said the other.

"But what's wrong with them? What do they do?" The older girl tilted her head impatiently at this continued line of questioning. Alice wasn't entirely sure her older sister knew what she was talking about to begin with, but the girl went on.

"They're awful, going into such wicked fits. I heard one of the students saying they can't stop themselves shaking, as if they can't help but behave like savages. They yell and scream and treat their wives in the most abominable fashion..." She checked her chin to the left and went on. "You shouldn't be concerned with those people, dearest. And stay away from them, they'd give you nightmares if you saw them." Alice's younger sister thought about this for a moment and then spoke gravely in her young voice.

"People must lead such desperate lives in secret. I think that we should pity the poor hatters, if that is the case. They must be lonely if they can't sell any of the hats to the people who come to the shop. They would never know who was wearing their hat around town."

"Hatters make many hats every year," the older reverend interjected gently, "I am sure they are very proud of their work, and glad for the remuneration." The youngest girl nodded calmly at this.

"What did she do, in the story?" This was the first that the real Alice had spoken in some time, and the young don looked up at her in the middle of the little rowboat. "She went to go see the March Hare; what did he tell her?"

"Well, he was having a rather chaotic tea party with the Mad Hatter himself," replied the don. Her sisters turned to look at her.

"So she did see him after all." The young man smiled.

"She could hardly avoid him. He was best friends with the Hare, and they were stuck at tea time because the Hatter had once insulted Father Time." He paused, and the older reverend kept rowing. "Would you rather she never went to their gathering?" Alice was silent for four turns of the oars.

"I don't want to ruin your story."

"It is very much your story."

"But you are the creator, you decide whether or not she is destined to go among mad people or not."

"Perhaps, but life does take one down ineluctable paths sometimes. What if she can't escape their meeting at some distant future point, regardless of my efforts?" Alice reflected again.

"Then I suppose she ought to pass through to their meeting as soon as possible."

"Go to them on purpose!" cried her older sister softly.

"On what theory?" asked the don with a cunning look. He was always wanting to know about her chain of logic, how she had gotten to a conclusion. She was readily coaxed into giving it up; it did make her feel a bit important.

"Well, when I avoid doing lessons or delay them until it is nearly too late, I find myself in a much more unpleasant situation than if I had done them promptly, as I ought to," said Alice.

"Yes, but that is _your_ fault, not that of Destiny," pointed out her younger sister kindly.

"I think," said Alice, "That if in the story she avoids these two at present, then time will stack up against her and produce a different outcome than if she met them sooner..." She trailed off. "If you don't release a steam valve in time, it becomes overwhelmed with pressure and is certain to explode and all come rushing out at once. It is better to have gotten things over with, especially if the March Hare and the Mad Hatter are as distressing as they sound."

They passed a low-slung tree, the girls ducked and managed their bonnets, and the older reverend murmured apologies for letting them drift in that direction.

"It is not March in the story, and so the Hare will not be in that unique state of frenzy." The don looked at Alice, and she looked at him. "This Hatter is not like the ones in town. He is more eccentric than terrifying."

"That sounds more amenable to a party. Perhaps he can tell her where to go next."

"Perhaps—or perhaps not. He is still a Hatter, after all, and can't help being what he is."

Alice opened her eyes and gazed up at the ceiling, letting her pupils adjust to the light of one candle. Her time in the bathtub was growing cold, but she didn't want to sit up. The water was comfortingly buoyant in a way that recent armchairs hadn't matched, and the unadulterated silence was broken every time she breathed, her ears submerged so that the sound filled the corners of her head. And there was her own heartbeat to keep her company. She liked listening to it now, feeling the lengths of floating hair close and around her, and keeping her lips and nose just over the line where the water turned into air. Twilight, she lay there so still that she fancied she could feel the twinge of lub-dub, lub-dub uttering just enough to tremble her private sea.

It had been a difficult number of weeks, the majority of which she had spent inside the White Rabbit's former cottage, dimpling her fingers into pie crusts and tossing the burnt remains out the back door, patty-pan and all. There was no concentration, just a long gaze out the window at the purple and white flashes of lightning, for it had stormed hard every day. Dust gathered in metaphorical streaks across her sleeves in those gray, unmemorable weeks, gathered across her mantel, across the moulding above the door. One day Alice forewent risking another fallen pie, shook those weeks from her sleeves, reached for her umbrella, and went into town without word or thought to purpose.

This new phase of autumn effected a change in the idle passersby as she reached the center of the capital—no more were there groups of identical faces with detailed costumes and festoons. A single stooping figure here or there kept close to the rows of terrace houses and did not seem to be walking for the sake of walking. The market was no longer supportable in this weather, signs of it gone from the streets entirely. The green on copper government buildings was turned a brackish gray, and so with her restiveness unslaked, Alice made the easy decision with a sigh to go home again. She dragged the umbrella's tip against the cobblestones, more for the accompaniment of noise than out of a childish petulance—it wasn't raining, anyway, all "sound and fury signifying nothing."

But Alice went, one afternoon, to a large antiquated granite building with a hand-lettered sign at the door giving the hours simply as _daylight_, which it was fast un-becoming with the sun tilted winterishly in the sky. She took a number off the small metal hook by the door and sat on a long wooden bench, dallying and skimming her toes over a checkerboard tiled floor, entirely alone in the lobby.

She waited and waited and waited, and eventually a young clerk with a green visor came out of a back room, and as she resisted the impulse to stand and call to him, he disappeared again without seeing her. Alice sat back and smoothed her hands over the dark glossy wood, slowly and carefully twisting the tip of her boot around into a juncture where two white squares and two black squares came together. She jumped up very quickly when the young man ambled over by the counter, and came near to be sure that he would see her.

"Er," she said aloud, and the sound seemed out of place in the big quiet space, bringing home to her how little she was, and how little her voice seemed.

"Have you got an appointment?" said the young man briskly, but not unkindly.

Alice looked at the big quiet space, which was still completely empty but for they two.

"I do have this number," and clicked it onto the counter. The young man slicked it in a drawer underneath the flat plane and folded his hands in front of her.

"I was recommended to come here and inquire after a house," said Alice carefully.

"Which house?" said the clerk.

Alice relayed him what she had come for.

The day previous, she found herself at a familiar fork along a garden path in the forest, and this time took the path she had not traveled once before. One direction would take her to one familiar house house, and the opposite direction would take her to the other familiar place. Alice folded her hands at the small of her back and stood in silence, feeling rather than thinking this decision out.

There was nothing at the end of the right tine of the path that would not be at the left, she thought to herself, but was wrong and surprised when she reached the mansion and found a group of figures up under the porch. She would not have seen them there had she not bothered to look. They were some of them animals and some of them men, and they seemed to be taking inventory on the place, testing it out, inspecting it.

_What are you doing?_ she asked the foreman of the group at the top of the steps. He had a large crooked nose, a heavily worn and smudged dust coat, and was busying himself with a toolbox. She had said these words in a polite tone of voice, having neither authority nor energy to demand answers out of him.

_Boarding the place up, miss_.

She had looked at him, and then looked at the house, and then looked at him again before hooking her umbrella on the door handle. Alice had expected to view the house alone, in silence, before perhaps trying the door, and if she were admitted, to go through it and close up the shades to save the furniture for another day and nothing more. Eventually she got it out of him that she should go to someplace in town to inquire why the great raspberry house hidden among the trees was in danger of being condemned like this.

_Not condemned, miss, I wouldn't put it that way_.

_Oh,_ with relief.

_More like razed._

"So you see, I am come to ask you what is the matter with the house," said Alice to the clerk.

"What do you mean?"

"Why it's being razed, it is an awfully fine house." The clerk gave her an odd look before he turned and went to the wall behind the counter, which was covered in handles and labels. He pulled out a long narrow drawer and fingered through the card index there before pushing it all the way shut with a single shove. He inspected the card under a magnifying glass, and Alice leaned forward to see.

"This indicates ownership by the Mad Hatter," he remarked, looking at her over his half-spectacles, a bit critically, perhaps. Alice did not reply for a moment.

"Yes," she said at last. He cleared his throat.

"It isn't set to be razed," continued the young man, "It has to be stripped of all the occupying furnishings, fixtures, and base materials, which will be auctioned by the crown at public." He looked at her again over the spectacles. "What is your interest in the house, miss?"

"I had passed it before once and wanted to know what was inside," she lied slowly.

"Was there anything else?"

"If you don't mind my inquiry, what is this place?" He tapped the edge of the card on the counter for a moment.

"This is the Bureau of Local Affairs. Housing and personal records, taxes, distribution, and proportion. Did you have something in mind particular about that house?"

"Well, I--" said Alice, "I am curious about the previous tenant." The clerk looked at Alice for a long silent moment, and then looked at the card in his hand. He pushed on the counter, and part of it swung backward like a little gate.

"Follow me, if you please," he said.

He led her past the wall of card indices and down past where she could see from the bench in the lobby to a door with a frosted glass plate, which he unlocked and into which they passed. It was a very handsome hall of records with a high ceiling and brass handles on all the big, deep drawers and shelving. The clerk climbed a track-bound ladder and went to open one, sifting through paperwork in a file. She turned to admire the place, and he slid the ladder over a few feet to hand her down an open folio.

"He's been exiled," was his conclusion.

"I know," she returned. "Does his record say where he is now?"

"That's only a property ledger; just says that he's been formally stricken as the titular holder of the property, which will revert to the crown." He looked down at Alice. "You were a friend of his, weren't you?"

"Friend, no, I--"

"No need to explain," he said, waving a hand. "No one else comes around here asking what the Bureau does, or interested in the records. You'd have to have better than a casual passing interest in a house like that." She pulled at her eyelid with her fingertips, thinking. She could not be sure if the clerk was sympathetic to whatever cause he thought she was about; it did the Hatter injustice to discount him so quickly, but to claim him outright would do her a greater disservice.

"What happened to him?" she said finally. The clerk backed himself down the ladder to level with her.

"The official answer is retribution for treason," he said, and they were both unmoved, for it had been repeated so often lately than she wasn't quite sure what it meant anymore.

"And the unofficial version?"

"Personally," said the clerk quietly, "And mind you, I'm only the housing and records clerk, but... I think all the minor 'incidents' and 'situations' and 'affairs' and 'happenings' he's perpetrated over the years finally reached a point for someone or some entity. Straw that broke the whatsit's back."

Alice looked at the floor as though it were a very great distance away from her.

"Everything that man has done over the years is recorded and kept in these deposit boxes." They turned and looked around the whole room again. "Not all bad; the government keeps an eye on folks just the same if they steal or save a life. Supposedly it keeps people hopeful of having more good than bad about them written up here. But the Hatter—it's a mystery to me how he ever attracted this much attention."

"I only thought he was an especially busy person," said Alice. She was detaching herself from her surroundings, being careful to keep the room at arm's length, and was glad when the clerk reset the file and escorted her from the room. Assuredly she would grow curious and want to open and sift through the paperwork, stacking it in great piles of a grid on the floor and flipping through the leaves, slipping through the hours, thoroughly laying out the man's life.

But Alice kept it at bay and was soon on the other side of the counter again.

"Can you tell me when everything will go up on the block?"

"The house is still being inventoried." She shifted from one foot to the other and pressed her fingers into the counter.

"So it will be a few days before everything is gone."

"Longer than that, one expects. Of course, that will mean more work for the comptrollers, that house being as big as all such."

"Why's that?" The clerk tilted his head to the side and looked past Alice, considering.

"An auction for fixtures means everything has to be sold piece by piece, and probably at a loss. Isn't a guarantee that anything will be of value in there. Could take months to dismantle that house."

"What a slow process in making an example of all this." _Of him. _She looked at the black tile under her toes.

"They'd be better off selling it, spend their time finding a buyer." And Alice looked up. The sun was really setting now outside, she could tell from the golden haze beginning to fill the hall. The clerk was beginning to whisk papers into drawers, his eye turned toward the clock on the wall where a flamingo was telling time with crooked wings. His answers were becoming breezy, almost offhand in his desire to get home for the evening.

"How would one go about doing that?" He stopped the end of day ritual for a moment to look at her directly on. His expression _had_ turned into one of sympathy, or at least good intentions, she thought. Perhaps he spent most of his day alone and was appreciative of her concern in addition to making him useful by asking so many questions.

"Why, are you interested in buying it?" She did not answer, and he went on somewhat philosophically. "I don't think you would ask if there wasn't something in that house worth it to you to rescue." He paused. "The crown will put what's in that house up for everybody to ogle and gawk at. Even if you discount him as a friend to the whole world, you could still save his possessions."

Alice could picture in her mind what she wanted from the house, and looked out the window at the fading light.

"When are you ever going to wear that hat I made for you?" His voice was so quiet in the lulling thrum of summer's last stand that she could hardly hear him over the sounds of herself beginning to fall asleep.

"You didn't make it for me," she heard herself say in a low, sleepy voice. "You pulled it from a box." Alice tilted her chin as far back as she could so that she could see the Hatter. He lay perpendicular to her on the blanket, one leg crossed over another, arms behind his head, dreamily watching the squares and diamonds of sunlight rotate through breaks in the red and yellow leaves like a zoetrope.

"Like magic," he replied. They were very tired from both the sunlight and the wine and the cheese and the game of horseshoes they had attempted to play. But they were not very interested in following the rules of that last one, and so instead spent the better part of two hours trying to get a ringer to spin all the way round the stake to the bottom, like a barber pole.

"Well?" he said again. His voice was ruining the long hot quiet and the way her eyelids kept sinking together, and Alice waited a moment for a vaguely unkind reply to slowly waft away again.

"Well what?"

"I wear a hat." Their conversation was very slow and if there had been any eavesdroppers they might have mistaken languidity for boredom, but there is distinction in the secret language between people, and must be finely discerned beyond casual listening.

"That you do, don't you?"

"Why don't you wear a hat? Do you not like it?" Alice opened her eyes and looked up into the boughs above.

"I do like it, I enjoy gifts from other people. I don't know why I've never worn it."

"It's not that I'm angry or that it bothers me," replied her friend in such a dry voice that it seemed ready to crack and drift, "I just wanted to know that you liked it, that's all."

"Be reassured that I do."

"Take excellent care of it, it does need attention every now and then," he said, and she could hear him smiling through that sentence.

"It's not a pet," said Alice, and tilted her chin all the way back to look at him once more. He was grinning, and she caught it. "But I shall do my best to honor us both when I do wear it."

She had to get to his house, and fast. Alice was running in the dark shadows of the garden paths, the horizon grading faster and faster into reds and purples and oranges, her dress pinched and caught at intervals in the hedgerows. Pressing matters of salvation and life and death do not often come upon us in truth; the most trivial matters are so commonly treated as a defining moment in one's career of bravery or pluck that when it comes time for us to be shoved into the heady rushing flue of real conflict, we may be apt to simply toss our hands into the air.

It was his hat which worried her, and not just worried, but gnawed at her deep in her stomach and made each step reverberate upward so that she ran not Mercury light on her mission, but heavy and mortal. She was bouncing inside uncomfortably, reminded of her realness and smallness. It was important, he had stressed that to her on more than one occasion, and certainly at their first meeting. It had his things inside of it, essential to his well-being and existence. His symbol, his icon, his profession, his raison d'être.

Why would he leave it behind?

Alice practically fell stumbling through the gate and tripped along up toward the house, and her hand was raised when suddenly there came upon her a realization, and with it, the sickly gray dawn.

She turned to face a familiar gathering; she met an empty lawn.

The speech she had been practicing in her mind—all the necessary facts, all the desperate but calm and clear intonations meant to call forth a sense of duty in whom she sought—she forgot, and instead Alice put her hands on her face and tried to divine what this meant. He was gone on holiday, _supposed_ to be anyway, but what had the Hatter said, he was delayed a few days by rained out roads.

But then again, she had never seen the March Hare's tea table completely disappeared. Alice turned back to where she had meant to knock at the door and nearly had her hand on the knob, and just stood there. That word, disappeared—the table was not just _gone_, or _put away_, or _in storage_, but disappeared. All the guilt bobbed and flanked her, and Alice looked down at herself.

Her dress was, she could see, ruined by several tiny pulled thread patches that could never be made right. A tear could be sewed up again and disguised, a stain could be put out, but a single missing thread was an obvious irreparability. The Hare hadn't removed his furniture last she had seen him—one doesn't move the furniture before going on holiday. But did the tea table go inside for protection, or was it gone and he was gone too now?

As the dawn swelled pathetically in half-measures and thin clouds, she could feel a night's worth of waking catch up with her, and she couldn't do it, she couldn't open the door and call for him. She didn't want to know. It was—she could see the grain pattern in the door clearly and then out of focus, and she turned and went across the lawn, passed through the gate, and then down the bricked path home.

She sat up in the cool air and wrapped her arms around to her shoulder-blades, shivered. Alice almost felt nauseous for a moment, the sudden change from floating quietly to being weighed down by several pinstraight pounds of sopping hair releasing their curls and water in an echoing instant coming so fast. It had been a very long day, a day spent calculating and realizing. They had let her keep the mateless diamond earring after all, for the money that the Hatter had given her was more than enough. One of the comptrollers had spent the intercession eyeing her, but no one said a word as to her purpose, and at the very end, after she had been written into the books, he approached, pressed the little jewel into her palm, and said,

"You should keep this, Lady." Alice smiled briefly at the little white sparkle. "But may I recommend that you not sell it, if you please."

"A single earring isn't any good to anybody, is it? Perhaps I'll find its second again someday." He raised a finger.

"On the contrary, I hope that you do not. A diamond is a diamond, even without a match. It'll change settings a thousand times and still be the hardest rock."

Alice smoothed her damp hair into the towel and looked around the unfamiliar bathing room again. It felt odd, even when she didn't quite acknowledge it. She had taken each carpeted stair to the second landing slowly, carefully, memorizing the place in its stillness, its newness. Given up and back was the White Rabbit's cottage and everything she owned within it besides, which was not much in reality. The one thing she did consider her own was the blue and cream striped box and its contents, and this she had placed in what she knew to be a guest bedroom, for it had an open door and an armoire that would give her a dress. It was the only room she had cared to look within so far.

The hat with the black and white stripes secured, Alice felt odd, in transition. All the things that surrounded her were now her own, but they were not hers at all. She would go through the house in the morning. The smooth round box, for tonight, was her only possession in the entire world.


	15. Chapter 15

The Count is based on George Sanders as he played Mr. Favell in the 1940 movie _Rebecca. _You might recognize his voice from a famous Disney movie.

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.  
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Shere Khan, the Big One, has shifted his hunting-grounds. He will hunt among these hills during the next moon, so he has told me.  
Rudyard Kipling

* * *

Now that she was in his house--for though her name was on the title and deed and legally the place was erstwhile the Hatter's, she firmly believed it was still his--Alice trod very carefully, for she was feeling uncertain about all this. It wasn't that she didn't feel proper or polite going through his things, for surely the Hatter would understand--wherever he was--that it was quite necessary for her to search his house, as his eponymous hat was nowhere to be found upon her first cursory turn about the four walls.

Mostly she was afraid that she would be disappointed, that somehow he would turn out to be badly represented by the things he kept in his private sphere, and she would find rooms full of banality, normal things that normal people have in normal houses. What leftover part of Alice that was not concerned with this fear was concerned that he was gone and had no say over what she could do, and so she tried carefully to preserve it, that sleeping notion that all would be restored to his watch and power in time.

Alice was pleased with her own room, glad for its comfort and amused, though slightly baffled, at the gowns the armoire produced for her--they were her usual cuts and shapes, but now with colors she would not have chosen given the chance; white stripes on teal, pink stripes on black. It did like stripes, she couldn't find a solid colored dress in the whole affair until she opened the door very quickly about twenty times in a row and found (of course) red on purple and felt that the least it could do was not mock her like that. Regardless, she wore the striped frocks and decided upon looking in the mirror that she would blend in if she were compelled to go into town.

But she was not disappointed by his own possessions, no. The first go around the house was cursory, brief, an introductory phase (for Alice quite wondered if perhaps it knew her, or would behave in a different fashion if she did not comport herself as a young lady, albeit one who has just done an unthinkable thing by purchasing a house, and off its exiled owner--she was half afraid it would take offense and she would wake while being booted out in the middle of the night). Surely as she had believed before, the whole of the place was done up in an exceedingly exotic, though not extravagant, style.

Floor by floor, she began to know the place. Some doors opened at her touch; others remained frozen and locked. There was a small solarium on the ground floor that looked out over a fair lawn in the back. She fancied she could see wickets left over from a game long since abandoned, but found the tiled mosaics in the floor far more entertaining, for they depicted as if in a large stone tapestry the history of what she thought might be the Wonderland itself. There were kings and queens battling it out over territory lines, illustrious wars and uprooting change, with baked hams all round to celebrate afterward. What did strike her as most curious was that there was no beginning depicted--where did the place come from? What creation story stood in the background to influence these panels of history?

The kitchen proved to be oddly sparse, Alice thought, for it was an optical illusion of a room with hardly anything within but brass pipes. There was a sink, but the main feature were the little black and white tiles like a long, rectangular checkerboard. The door next to the empty larder was barred to her, probably leading to the cellar with all the pipes.

The upstairs corridors proved far more interesting. In one room on the first floor, there was a neat little study with a desk and a stack of design sketches and dimensions held under a fishbowl for a paperweight. She carefully eased through them, not wanting to get them out of whatever semblance of order he thought them in, strangely pleased to see texture in the lines and imagining the carbon stick between his fingers, twisting and gently pulling the image out, his working hands smoothing over the thick vellum, feeling it under bare fingertips as she did now. He did not plan to make bonnets anymore; she found a series of odd hats for gentlemen, with pinched tops, but most of the sketches were of his usual larger-than style.

Alice set the papers down carefully, not shuffling them, in an attempt to keep them fresh and unsmudged, and turned to find between the bookcase and the window an odd thing jutting halfway out of the wall. Or at least it seemed to come from the wall, and as she approached it, she realized it was a dark brassy globe, but only half of one.

It took her a moment to understand, but then it was clear that this was the Wonderland--for the word was stamped into the metal in blocked letters. How curious a feeling it was to realize that she was on another world!--not merely a flat, parallel version underneath her England, but an entirely new place with new features and its own borders. She had not thought it was its own planet, and Alice was suddenly quite frightened for herself.

The Wonderland could be described just so: imagine the "five" side of a die. There are four dots in a square, and a fifth in the middle of that. Now imagine that the dots are neighbor states, with one in the middle which touches all of the others. These states did not take up all of the globe's surface, but had clearly marked borders separating them from each other.

Such surprisingly generic names for a fantastical place. Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western--and "Capital" marked in the middle. Alice leaned in very close, but there were no specific place names for her to learn in an impromptu geography lesson that would have perhaps inspired her to inquire as to the Hatter's current location with a bit more finesse of whomever might humor her. She ran her fingers over the darkened metal, feeling mountains and seas, but a disconnect regardless. There was no spot marked "Here is where one goes in exile," or "This is where we put the bad ones," though she hadn't _assumed_ that there would be. Alice pulled gently on it, tried to spin the hunk of brass, but it just rattled in the wall setting.

She wanted to know what was on the missing side of the globe, but then thought that perhaps she didn't.

It was on the second floor that she found the room full of maps and drawings and strange mechanical models, bird cages with no birds, dusty white plaster busts of people she did not recognize, and a very odd thing in the corner which she inspected most carefully, but could not understand at all beyond that it was a game, surely. It was a large flat rectangular box on legs, with a tall display board behind it, and all manner of mechanical gears inside the clear glass top. It sort of looked like a bagatelle. Buttons and knobs with springs on the sides, and colorful patterns with arrows and holes within. She regarded it quietly, alien to her, and tried to remember to ask the Hatter what it was one day.

The other rooms on that floor diverged between these spaces full of ideas and clean but oddly decorated guest bedrooms. There were no portraits in them, only landscapes that when viewed from across the room seemed bucolic and peaceful. When she approached them, though, she could see that the reapers in the fields had sowing scythes that blew steam and the cottage-in-the-woods scenes tended toward the absurd, just as in real life here. Picnics with giraffes in straw boater hats, queens riding panthers through a dunescape. What other decorations to be had were mostly confined to the tools and instruments she had found in the glass curio cabinet down in the great parlor.

She was greatly relieved to find that the other half of the second floor was dedicated to his collection of teapots--the dividing walls had been broken out for more room. Yes, there were ones shaped like octopi, and others with clockfaces in their bellies, and still others that had four spouts that she recognized from a long time ago. There was a teapot that sat on top of two stacked cups to form a little tower shaped like a man with a spout for a nose, and another that was all curved mirror and reflected the young lady back to herself, closer and further away at the same time. There were scores of them, set on shelves that lined the walls and created a maze for her to run, a private museum of the man's great passion in life.

Alice was not really startled until she reached the third floor, which was where she turned a knob on a door and realized she had found the master bedroom. She stood in the doorway for a moment before passing over and within. It was a corner room, with a horseshoe shaped bank of windows that suggested it would have been one of the circular turrents as viewed from the outside. But it was not that which clued her in to it being his private sleeping quarters--if indeed he slept at all--it was the pair of red and gold slippers under the side of the fourposter closest to her. She left the door open, and taking very great care not to touch or come near anything, moved around the bed to view the large and silent space. There was another door around the other side, and she briefly opened it to find a small white echoing room with a lionfoot bathtub in the very center.

It did not seem like his place of rest; none of it really did, it was so clear and tidied, out of a catalogue or set up as though it expected visitors. It was not the messy affair she had expected and hoped for in his daily chaos. There were no secrets to be found, certainly no answers, and no hat. She was back around at the foot of the bed when Alice stepped to open the large dark armoire, and then the room was very suddenly and very much his and his alone. It groaned at the door's opening and nearly popped, it was so full. Purple waistcoats, pinstriped trousers, a shining golden dressing gown, a dark blue velvet smoking jacket--here were the wild colors and swirling patterns she recognized with a small drop of melancholy now, but no green hat. Alice tried very hard, but it was difficult not to breathe in the smell of lemon and tea that came thickly off his clothes. She wondered vaguely if he was still wearing evening dress from that night now, wherever he was.

Alice pulled the door shut behind her, memorizing the pattern on the duvet, and stoically did not enter his bedroom again after that.

She took a turn about the fourth floor ballroom, which consumed the whole of that space, but did not stay long. It was one great dark hot room lined with mirrors, and she saw herself standing alone over and over again, and then retreated back down.

There was one other room she found of great interest, one she initially thought was locked until a sudden burst of wind from inside it caught the door and flung it open with a smash and a shudder against the wall. There was a tremendous sound of flapping, and she rushed at the desk to grab at the pieces of paper slipping away off the stack, pulling them out of the air. It was no good, the swinging doors leading out to the balcony were open, and she pushed them shut so that at last Alice was left with papers all over the floor, which she began to herd back together.

Curious materials. They were ship manifestos, weather reports, cargo inventories, and information about ocean currents.

Setting them back on the desk, Alice turned to look about her and saw that the room was, well, _normal_. It was very odd to go about a man's house getting used to clashing colors and the sort of decorations only a scientist could love; it was rather startling to walk back into something she would have expected to see in a proper English home, right there. It didn't have dark red walls with constellations mapped out, or sextants sitting on the bookshelves; it had rugs with patterns she could stand to look at without going walleyed, and a little table with a silver tea service that sat perfectly still and didn't jump up in euphoria to greet her. On the desk was a small model of a ship, and on the wall was a miniature ivory portrait of a man in military dress.

But the most curious thing of all had to be what was out the window, for when she went over to look out and down into the back lawn and see the remnants of the croquet game again, there was a harbor with ships' masts in its place, and a storm approaching in the distance. They all bobbed in the bay, and Alice actually went out onto the balcony, squinting her eyes to make sure this was happening. It was.

The Hatter too had a secret room that did not belong, and Alice was not sure how to feel about it. There was no way to get down to reach the ships below, and she went back inside to stare at the miniature carefully. The man painted there looked rather plain and normal, though his brass-covered lapel suggested that he was quite important, or at least that he liked shiny things and ribbons. She could not be sure; it was not within Alice's realm of knowledge whether a man was a general or a corporal.

The hat was not in this room, however mysterious it was, and Alice went down into the parlor to think and have a cup of tea off the steam service.

When she reached the Bureau again, the clerk was a different man, and she asked him to find her a certain key. The agency was experiencing an upswing in business that day and actually had other people milling about quietly--though it was still just as sleepy as ever. She was wondering how on earth the government kept the place running like this if no one came around when someone cleared their throat over her shoulder.

Alice turned and saw a flash of crimson hair, and stared into the eyes of a particular _man of wealth and taste_ for the very first time.

"Please allow me to introduce myself," he said, giving carefully-mannered velvet lamplight to the words. "I am the Count." He was indeed the Count, dripping with disdain, rumbling with a methodical, luxurious drawl of an accent, lolling and rolling through every vowel as thought it gave him the greatest pleasure to hear the sound of his own deep, cultured voice.

She was quite startled to see his face, but managed to keep her surprise--she hoped--under a smooth mask, and did not shrink from the man. He really did have hair the brightest and deepest shade of red she had ever seen; so crimson it took on shades of orange and gold when the light hit it in certain spots. It was odd to look upon him from the other side. He was quite handsome, with a straight nose and deep eyelids, cheekbones suited perfectly toward a career in modeling for decorative sculptures of the Greek gods. There was something distinctly smug and happily arrogant in the way his mouth naturally smirked, however, and she was very glad to discover that she did not like him at all.

"How do you do," said Alice in a low and careful voice. She had to carefully _think_ not to tell him her name; she was a polite girl, but it did not sit well to go about offering up her identity to enemies of her friends. He let the moment slip by.

"Well!" he said in an unsurprised voice, "You _are_ a quiet little thing, aren't you? What is your name?"

"Lady," she said after a pause. She was looking at his profile, and upon her word, one of his eyebrows arched upward very far. He grinned just a bit, suddenly, jutted out his chin in satisfaction and leaned just so into the counter to look at her.

"Ah...!" He did not speak again for a moment, but stood watching her, and Alice felt very keenly that he was allowing the silence to encroach upon her awkwardly so that she would fill it with nervous idle chatter.

She gazed calmly at him instead of giving him her life story.

"Who gave you a title like that?"

"The Duchess did."

"Dutchy-Dutchy. Dear old girl."

Alice folded her hands on the counter.

"Do forgive me if I've interrupted anything." He was still smiling in that way and obviously did not give two figs about whether he was bothering her.

"I am only here on business, and I am waiting, so you have not interrupted me."

"So direct!" he said quietly, and then to her, "I hear you bought a house recently."

"That is correct."

"Mmm, yes, owner abandonment, was it? Pity, that. Quite forthright of the young lady to make such a bold purchase, but I suppose one must have a place to call one's own."

"I suppose so."

"And how do you like the old homestead? All settled in?"

"Yes," said Alice.

"Friends and friends and friends," he said quietly again.

She did not reply, and another clerk approached to ask if the gentleman needed something from the records.

"I can't be bothered with that, I have no time for that," was the red-haired man's lazily dismissive reply. But he kept his place and continued to look at her as though he expected her to speak again. There was nothing untoward about him but this almost invisible propensity for making her feel put upon and uncomfortable--he did not leer at her or stand in any other way than a gentleman would. But regardless of his preening figure, the Count cut a predatorial turn with the subtlest of flickers within his eye.

When the clerk she recognized returned with a small envelope containing the key, Alice thanked him quickly so that he would not go into an oral dissertation on what the thing went to, but before she could turn and go,

"Ah, you are leaving us, then?"

"I am, I have errands to run this afternoon."

"Indeed." And out he strolled. She thought on it, and was not afraid of the Count, but Alice waited in case that he had decided to linger outside, and even when she did see fit to go, she wandered slowly to ensure that he was not following her.

She found the shop after that, and tried the key. The bolt turned in the opposite direction than logically made sense--of course--and she got inside quick, shutting and bolting it once more. The place was still dark, good that no one could see her inside with all the shades pulled, and she was about to head into the back room of his workroom once more when she realized that there was a tall shop form where there had not been before.

And put atop it somewhat blendingly was a large green felt hat, missing its decorative crown band and price slip, looking for all purposes still in progress. She pulled it into her hands and went through the curtain and into the other room to look at it most seriously.

Yes, this was his hat, and he had, Alice rather thought, put it here with the intention that she should find it, for it did not seem that he often admitted customers to the place, and she _would_ know that something about the room had changed, wouldn't she?

She went to the closet and had turned the knob, pulled the door just out of its frame.

"Oh, wrong one," she muttered, and opened the closet next to it, the one filled with ladies' hat boxes. She dropped the green top hat into a tall empty one and went briskly home, but kept a secret eye about her for any shadows or red shine.

What happened afterward took up the rest of the entire afternoon. She got home, closed the door behind her, and did not even have off her cape before she was making sure once more that the hat was his. Why had he wanted her to hang onto it so badly? Why hadn't he taken it with him? What was so important about it?

Alice frowned, a bit frustrated at having gone all over town like that, and turned the oddly-sized green top hat over in her hands, beginning to inspect the thing in earnest, wondering half-seriously if he kept instructions or even a teapot on the inside. She tilted it, upside down in her hands, closer to the afternoon window to look within and met with an ellipsis in her train of thought: the inside of the hat seemed to eat up all the light.

She moved directly to the glass pane and stared into the hole for fully thirty seconds before concluding that it was indeed rather inexplicable given the laws of--well, not the Wonderland, she thought with dry irony. Still she could not see to the far anterior of the hat. There was nothing for it, and so Alice stuck her hand tentatively into the darkness just past where the brim lay on the outside of the hat, and jerked it out again quickly. Her hand had disappeared. It was there and then it wasn't. Before she had really finished considering it, and remembering something she had seen him do a time before, Alice stuck her hand, and then her wrist, and her forearm and her elbow and her upper arm clear until her shoulder, far past where the top of the hat should have been, and could not help the massive intake of air her lungs reflexively took.

The hat went nowhere, into nothing. There was no other side. She dropped it numbly, and stood watching as it rolled in lazy half-circles back and forth on the dark wood floor, slowly righting itself like a penny possessed. It was probably two minutes of tensely starting at it, seeing for herself that it would sit perfectly still before she could pull together her faculties and reach for it and into it once more, wondering how on earth he could have pulled a teapot from it when--

Alice pulled her hand out again very sharply, and goggled, wide-eyed, at her fingers, wrapped neatly around the handle of a steaming little kettle of tea with a leaf pattern on the side.

When we are feeling quite lubricated and breezy with the world--especially after that second or third nicely chilled Harvey Wallbanger on the veranda--it has been said that Fate often takes the opportunity to sneak up behind us with a length of lead pipe. This was of course the case with Alice, who despite recent and understandably unsettling shocks to her system, was apparently up for another go round and was once more slightly unglued--by the appearance of something that had not been in her hand before. The girl stared at the teapot, and if the teapot had had eyes it would have stared back at her, but as it was, the thing simply smoked at her in reply. She set the unseeing thing on a low table nearby and held the hole-side of the hat before her eyes with both hands.

Alice again slid her hand very carefully forward, but when she pulled it out again there was nothing new. Was that all that had been inside, Alice asked herself, a teapot with a hideous pattern? She shook the hat gently, half-expecting the contents of a carpetbag to clatter out onto the floor, perhaps a lamp or a brolly or something. She had seen him pull hundreds of china pots and cups and saucers from various parts of his frock coat, but then there had been other items mysteriously appearing from nowhere. Letters, and bottles, and jelly candies, and a coach clock, and that cheese muffin she had been hungry for, of course, and a kite, and some half-eaten marmalade... had he got them all from inside his own hat? Surely he couldn't fit everything he had ever pulled out of the hat in the hat. She held it closer to her face and peered very hard.

There was, Alice vaguely thought, a bit of a lightly sucking updraft here, as though it were bigger on the inside. As if it were a portal to something else. She shoved her hand in very quickly this time, feeling and probing and finally flailing about in the darkness inside. She could only fit up to her arm within, but there was nothing as far as she could reach. She twisted her arm back around to where the sides should have been, and then back toward where her middle should have been, and her hand it just kept going. Nothing, nothing at all. It was so very like him to build an absurd hat like this, continued her inner monologue. Silly, ridiculous hats. Hats that go nowhere, hats with peacock feathers all over them--

If Alice had been a drawing or a character in a nickelodeon, there perhaps would have appeared over her head a character in punctuation which we call an asterisk, or in modern times maybe a lightbulb would suffice her very well. She tilted her chin to the side and let her eyes go very very wide in a guarded triumphant look. She did not want to let this particular revelation get away from her. The objet d'art in her hand, as you may have guessed, was a hideous amethyst beret with a long and wide fan of peacock feathers cascading down the back, now paused halfway between the end of the hat and the tips of her fingers.

And there it was.

It was another half hour before Alice looked up as from a trance and found herself surrounded by the following objects: yet another hemispherical anemometer; about forty-seven bubbling pipes of various sizes, lengths and colors; frosted biscuits; several pairs of spats; enough teapots and mismatched cup and saucer sets to cover the end table and several coffee tables besides; a tin of wax-paper-wrapped cheese muffins save one; a spanner with a tortoiseshell handle; large tubular rolled up parchments of odd technical drawings with strange shorthand labeling different parts of what looked like a giant capital T; a brass skeleton key (she wondered what warded lock this went to, but rather supposed it would not open anything as the bittings were all worn down to dull nubs, and it was not on a ring as his key to the trees in the forest had been); a whacking great taxodermied swordfish on a plaque with a baleful and accusatory stink in its eye;and lastly, a pair of soft fashionable driving gloves about the size of a man's hand.

Alice let this sink in for a moment, all these things that she had drawn from the inscrutable paradox inside the Hatter's hat. Now normally her reaction would have been to frown and let herself be confused, or to question and curse the Wonderland in futility, shaking her fist into the heavens and wondering aloud in very unladylike terms why she was allowed to be tormented in such ways. Instead Alice hiccuped twice, put the back of her hand over her mouth, and sank to the floor in a mad kind of giggling fit, marked several times by higher hysterical notes that she checked stiltingly and recovered before lowering again into breathlessness.

This really was rather remarkable--or amazing, or fantastical, if you like. Stranger than the fictions of flying scissors, talking lizards, caterpillars and hookahs were the blocky conundrums of the Hatter, and yet far more intriguing and like a riddle than the almost jejune nature of what oddities surrounded her. Deeper and deeper the spiral into the Hatter's psyche and secrets went, and onward Alice caromed as through the rabbit hole once more. As much as she had expected the place to be so like the former Wonderland of her childhood, Alice had been surprised that it seemed so much closer to normality--and then surprised once more when it turned out to be just as outre, if not more so. Pulling a rabbit out of a hat must be quite easy with this thing, she very nearly thought, picking a thin light strand of hair off the inner brim, and then remembered the strange blank look of nothing on the lawn when she had come back to the table and there was nothing, the presence of absence, no Hare, no reaction.

She thought very hard about the small rabbit in the jacket with the wide four-punch buttons and an avuncular attitude toward the china on the table, and eased her hand into the hat, purposefully keeping her mind away from an obvious kind of negativity. Alice pulled her hand out again and closed it into an empty fist.

Still kneeling, she leaned back on her heels and looked with a quiet despair about the darkening house that was not hers, and all the things she had pulled as if by prestidigitation. It was becoming far too much; she had wanted him so far away to avoid his distractions, and then closer because she did not understand, and farther away again so she could work alone, and the cycle had begun to repeat itself and would have repeated itself in an endless ticking track had he never been charged. The contention was like a wall in their looping orbit of one another--just as she had finally decided that his help was truly invaluable, off he was destined to some cold place apart from her reach and searching questions.

Alice looked down into the hat resting on her knees before folding her arms over the hole, dropping her forehead onto them and pressing her chin into the upside down brim. She took a very deep breath, and for the first time in a very long time, she cried, her plaintive voice remaining in those spiked upper notes of sharp private feeling, no hysterics or theatrical sobbing. Just the gasp and quiet sigh, followed by hot rivulets of tears, for she was very much ashamed that she longed for the presence of the man with the white hair more than she missed England and her family.


	16. Chapter 16

Lo, all the air is strange unto mine eyes,  
Lo, all the stars are dead;  
Only the moon appeareth overhead  
As one that dies.

"Aubade," from _The Book of Jade_ by David Park Barnitz

It's four o'clock and all's not well  
in my private circle of Hell  
I contemplate my navel hair  
and slowly slide into despair

The Divine Comedy, "Through a Long and Sleepless Night"

* * *

In the dark room the woman watched the man working. His sleeves were rolled and he compulsively reached up with the crook of his elbow—for both his hands were busy—to brush away both imaginary sweat, very real and justified anxiety, and thirdly the hair out of his eyes. She remained silent as she could, putting her energy into quieting her pacing footsteps. Back and forth, back and forth, her neck was beginning to hurt from turning it to look at him from the other side of the room. She was so full of nervous tension that she was ringing, vibrating, just barely keeping herself from trembling, all the while twisting her hands into the fabric of her skirt. Not that the man would have noticed in the dark room, she could hardly see him as it were. He put the forceps into the metal pan with a swishing tinny clatter and leaned back on his heels for a moment.

"Well?" she whispered after a penetrative silence that told her nothing. "What do you think?" He was illuminated by the deep depths of the low flame, but she could only see his black silhouette, the light casting him into negative.

"I don't know," he said. "I wish I knew better than this—" She crossed her arms over her body, hugging herself and setting her mouth into a prim line that did not suit her, not really, anyway.

"It's an awfully inconvenient time for uncertainty." The man finally turned back from where he was crouching near the dim light to look at her—perhaps glare at her, she could not tell.

"Don't forget that you agreed to this," was his reply, and the woman felt her knuckles twinge with irritation.

"Upon the understanding that it would benefit us both, or at the very least, one of us."

"I never guaranteed anything, I can't guarantee anything," said the man, rising to cross the room and stand beside her, folding his arms. She looked up at him and through the deeply-lined shadows flickering over his brow, she could just discern a kind of sadness there, a burgeoning… regret, perhaps. And she felt a deep shot of worry strike her middle and pass through her spine, just once, leaving a sense of vacancy where it had been.

The man and the woman stared very hard at the spot in the room where the man had been working, watching the light flicker weirdly of its own way, and waited for the return.

* * *

The next day brought both the Cat and first snowfall. It hadn't been much of one, only a middling halfhearted dust, but it was there, and Alice hadn't been the one responsible for it. She had it in mind to ask the Cat about this, but right now she was standing on the roof looking down at something, both to look at it and to see how long it would be before the Cat would speak. She didn't know if he knew that she knew he was there, but he probably did, and so did she.

What she was looking at, up there on the strange wooden balcony or platform, an unfinished rooftop deck, if you will, was a building next to the main house. She hadn't known it was there; she had peeked out into the relatively sparse back garden through the conservatory window and not given the outside another thought in the face of all the capricious trinkets scattered throughout the house.

But the ring of keys she'd pulled from the hat had unlocked the closet off the main hallway, and this turned out to be a narrow columnar staircase with a thick rope dangling from somewhere upward, and she climbed it carefully to find herself above the treetops quite high, where it was very cold.

There once been kept pigeons or some other such bird on this roof at one point, but perhaps that was only a vague fancy of hers. Set at an angle beneath one of the walled eaves was a golf bag; he hadn't totally abandoned the place, it seemed, and her mouth sort of made a reflexive smile, but it came out rueful. She could imagine him standing here at the edge, looking out over the world from the highest vantage point possible, totally alone, thinking whatever strange elusive thoughts he did, and she could not pretend to know what they might be. Alice coughed once and the sound disappeared.

"This used to be much easier," she said to the Cat without acknowledging his presence or turning to see him. She knew he was there because she had seen his smile hanging in midair, masqueraded as a sliver of dimming sunlight off some stray piece of metal or a distortion from the clouds. There was a noise, a little silver bell ringing nearby, and slowly she looked up.

The sound came from a bird sitting on one of the scooping gray shingles, shivering and puffing out its feathers, turning its little bobbing head, apparently planning to take off in that direction, or perhaps the other. She had seen crows, and remembered the birds with pencils for heads and hearing of shaggy leggy borogroves like walking mopheads, but this was something new.

Alice regarded the thing passively for a moment. It was an odd little creature, with lengths of arrowing stripe across its scaly feet and a plumage pattern resembling overlapped circles. The oddest thing had to be its beady black eyes, though, stacked in a startling way, one _above_ the other, and when it blinked they seemed to flash at her right out of the feathers rather than from some socket, deep and black, nearly invisible. It opened its beak and gave the high-pitched call again.

"It's a clockingbird," said the disembodied voice, and just before she turned, Alice watched the little thing tilt its head before it flapped expertly away.

"A what?" The Cat was sitting on one of the eaves nearby, ostensibly having recently come into focus. He seemed to be counting the rings in his tail, but was doing it by tracing a claw in a downward spiral pattern, like a barbershop pole.

"A clockingbird," he said again, and cleared his throat. "Usually their migratory patterns are so precise that you could set the time by them, but, uh—" and here he paused to brush the tip of his tail so all the fur ran concurrent—"It seems Winter is late."

"Aren't you supposed to be missing or disappeared or something?" The cold was making her fingers numb, and Alice was growing cross.

"Ohhhh, _dear_," he said. "Maybe, I can't remember sometimes," and lazily rolled onto his back, using his tail for a pillow. "What did you mean, _it used to be much easier_?" His voice came out so luxurious, a light fog leaving neat little footprints across her aural memory. Alice lifted her hands weakly and let them flop back down in a frustrated gesture.

"That building down there," she said. The Cat lifted an eyebrow but did not change his strange, serious expression, listening keenly and preening his fur. "I'm looking at it, I see it, it is clearly down there, and yet it's so…" Alice flexed her fingers and wrapped her arms around herself in the chill.

"Hmmm," said the Cat, and Alice watched him hold his arm out, the paw dangling at the end, before taking his other paw and running his claws through it, combing out the excess with the air of a butler attending his sacred task in the silver closet. He looked up at her and paused.

This building she was gazing down upon wasn't attached proper, and might have been a carriage house, but Alice was dumbly perplexed to find that she was not as interested in it as she might have been, or perhaps ought to have been. She hadn't really felt much of anything about the whole of the house; it seemed so very nondescript suddenly. Teapots and wood and floors and drapes and porcelain and stone fireplaces, they all just sat there like a queer dead weight, no matter what color they were or how outrageously they were arranged.

The Cat blinked silently, his arm still stuck out before him, and wiggled his nose. She had never seen him not grinning before, she didn't know he _couldn't_, and it wasn't a look she liked, for it gave him an almost comically imperious air, but threw all of his stranger features into a stronger view. It was as offputting as it would have been had Dinah climbed onto the piano, crossed her little legs, and begun knocking out a minuet. She caught her balance and looked back down onto the building's roof.

"Why did I come here?" said Alice, looking out over the forest, the sun having gone invisible between the pathetic cloudcover. The wind was picking up, and now she wished she had gone back for a shawl before letting herself climb the stairs. She didn't even remember what they looked like now.

"Why do _you_ think you're here?" he said, very close by, and she turned to look, but then he'd jumped, and all at once she gasped and stood still; Alice was suddenly holding the Cheshire Cat in her arms not as one holds a child or a normal housecat, but as a heavy stack of books, or a water-filled vase. He was extremely warm, and his fur did not feel like fur, but rather… rubbery, flexible, in an unusual, pleasant way, as though it could not separate, though the hairs and whiskers across his face and head did have flecks of bunches suggesting hair. Alice had been correct in thinking he was rather fat, for he was also quite heavy.

"I thought it was because I was summoned."

"And?" She could feel his whole voice reverberate through his limbs and out his fur, and he was so bizarrely real, a plum and rose thing in her arms, talking to her with this perhaps annoyed expression.

"And… I'm needed to help bring back missing creatures. Investigate whatever is making them disappear."

"And?" He insisted, flicking his tail, which moved smoothly, thickly against her elbow.

"And… now the Mad Hatter needs me. I've got this house, I—" she looked back down at the detached building below. "He told me to look for a woman, I don't know what that means." He quirked an eyebrow and began to smile again, just a bit.

"Lots of… women around here. Do, uh, you believe him?"

"I don't think the circumstances of his instruction allowed for a farce or a lie."

"So you trust him."

"I don't see a reason not to, he was given orders from the crown to guide me."

"And does he?"

"He hasn't been _terribly_ helpful, as far as my directive is concerned," she replied. "I suppose… I suppose there have been quite a few diversions and lay-bys in his company." She shifted her arms, and he twisted one of his whiskers, adjusting it. "It all seems like such a waste when I think about it carefully. And now both the Hatter and the Duchess depend upon my expedient action, while I'm… stuck. I'm stuck." And there it was. She felt awful.

The Cat shrugged, but did not move his paws from where he had settled into her arms. She was not quite as cross now, having turned to head into a bit of depression at her admission of failure, but at least he was warm and she was regaining feeling in her fingers.

"I want to go home," she said before thinking. It was true, in a sense, as though it would solve everything to simply walk out of the Wonderland.

"Then find the way out," he countered.

"But it's closed, and locked."

"_Ohhh_, the gate's locked?" Now the moony grin was there, at least on one half of him, and he gave her a sardonic look. "You poor thing."

"Well, there's no other way out, is there? I'm not so sure I remember where the rabbit hole was, or perhaps if that _is_ the rabbit hole, transformed. And even if the Wonderland weren't blocking me in, I should feel terrible knowing there are people probably wondering where I am, if I will help."

"So?" he said dismissively.

"So? What do you mean, _so?_"

"So…" he looked at her again, penetratingly, "I can pull myself… in six directions, even though there are only four, but you, you aren't quite so capable, nor are you so flexible that you can split your tail. Especially now that you've gone and come back again. Again." His eyes were still brassy gold even in the diffuse light.

"That was a while ago," said Alice. The Cat held his whiskers out with one paw and drew the claws on his other across them to make a sound like a harp.

"You know, not everybody loses their pluck when age and maturity come breezing in and take over." He clucked his tongue. "Aren't they all _just a pack of cards_? Do houses have but doors?"

Alice sighed, and he shook his head at her, mock rueful.

"You'd make a terrible burglar, you know. Don't look too hard, you might go blind." And the Cat grinned full and briefly faded before he sprang lightly from her arms, only to reappear bone by bone along the edge of the roof, his stripes following his departure into the forest by dashes.

A roar in the distance, and Alice started and jerked her steps forward to peer out over the treetops, pushing to move in the cold. She listened, and the sound echoed over on itself again. Far away, so far that she almost couldn't see it, a line of thick white smoke went up from a carried point along the horizon, and she realized it was just a train. Alice tried to relax her shoulders, but they clenched involuntarily up here.

She moved down from the eave and skirted near the edge to reach the archway again before pausing. There was a rustling in the trees as the Cat landed his mark, and she went back downstairs.

It snowed clean the next night, and when Alice went out for a walk, she was very careful to try to stick to the brick path through the forest, but was resigned to the possibility of finding herself lost, for it was difficult to see where the walk had been laid, and the trees tended to part as though it went through them no matter where she looked.

She stood under a tree with a sign nailed to it and the letters "WAY OUT" written in the middle, but each of the four sides had an arrow pointing a different direction.

"Hello," said a voice, sounding surprised but not displeased.

Alice stopped and looked all around, adjusting her muffler, somewhat fearful that she had heard the word in her head, but no, someone was here with her, and it was not the Cat.

There, sitting on the edge of a brick-ledged well nearly hidden by a tree, sat one of the Duchess's royal circle. The black-haired girl with a red ribbon over her fringe smiled benevolently, her red- and blue-cloaked shoulder against a roof post as she glanced into the waters below her. She seemed unsurprised but gave a demure look to see Alice as the younger girl approached, and the princess's pretty red mouth and sparkling eyes gave the impression of someone who spent her days being fed cherries and nectar brought by wing and hoof of benevolent forest creatures.

"Something weighing on your mind?" said the pretty princess sweetly as Alice leaned over to see her dark reflection below. "You do look concerned."

"I seem to find myself at a strange crossroads," said Alice, looking up at the snowy branches with a sigh.

"Mm," said the princess in a sweet little melodic sound. "I heard about the Hatter—shame, really." Alice started and looked at her. She was laying out seeds in a little path for a brown titmouse that was cautiously hopping its way round the ledge toward her.

"What have you heard, exactly?" The princess dusted her hands together and looked up.

"That he's been shunned for treachery," she said in the same voice. Alice felt her shoulders slump a bit.

"What exactly has he done to earn such a mark, though?" she asked, almost to herself or the forest. A slushy pile of snow flumped from a tree branch above to the ground in soft reply.

"He's done... traitorous acts?" The fact that the princess's remark ended in a question mark gave Alice no reassurance that she could sly any information out of the girl.

"Have you ever seen any monsters in the forest?" replied Alice slowly. The girl sighed thoughtfully and folded her hands in her lap.

"What sort of monsters?"

"Something dangerous and awful. I'm inclined to think it's a terrible beast, but so many people are convinced it isn't the-" and here she trailed off and gestured meaningfully, not wanting to invoke another admonition for speaking aloud the name of the Jabberwock. The princess was apparently on the same page, for she nodded knowingly.

"In my experience, it's usually people who reveal themselves to be the monsters, not the creatures here." Alice was quiet, and the girl went on. "Sometimes they are closer than your own self and you would not know it."

Alice gave her a careful look, for her words were quite obviously weighted down with some secret significance. The princess looked at her bemusedly for a moment before replying,

"Oh! I don't mean _you_, of course, dear." Or perhaps they weren't.

"Well," said Alice after a pause, during which the princess took out another handful of seed from within her cloak, "Enjoy the snow, I'm sure the animals appreciate your charity." The girl looked up.

"Oh, goodbye, dear. Don't wander too far," she said kindly with a shake of her finger and a pretty smile.

Alice did, and whether it was unconsciously done or out of spite against the sweet-voiced princess, I cannot tell you, but know that she went quite far, for she was thinking hard on whether the Cat had refined, endorsed, or even commanded her desire to make her way back to England. And for a brief while, Alice indulged herself the notion of going back, though it was one of those incomplete fancies which comfort us so easily, where all our plans go smoothly and precisely as we imagine them. She was just picturing the orange blossoms on her sister's head in the narthex when Alice realized she was standing in front of a very large hole in the middle of the forest.

The girl found this to be of a concerning nature, but primarily it confused her, as it wasn't a hole in the ground, or a ragged break in the treeline, it was more of a… cave, or a tunnel of sorts, a large black circle, just… sort of hanging there. Well, the Wonderland willed what it would, she supposed. Alice thought back on the walk high atop the buttressed cliffs and seeing this hole from quite far away, and remembered, tottering slightly in the snow and feeling her cheeks burn, perhaps from the cold, perhaps from the intrigue.

She wasn't supposed to go here, he had recommended against it, it being a "not nice" sort of place. But the tunnel interested her very greatly, especially as she walked to and then fro in front of it, there being a thin spot of light coming from within. Alice had stuck her arm into the hat after a brief hesitation; no monster had poked its head out and made off with an entree comprised of her limb. She looked around here at the quiet trees.

It was cool inside, warmer than the forest, but not so warm to be stifling, and it got warmer as she kept going, holding her arms out before her, nearly tripping in the darkness. It felt like there wasn't any ground beneath her at all in some places. She was surprised to get out into the open; there hadn't been a gradual increase of light, merely that dinner-plate sized point on the horizon, and then grass.

Loads of it, not poking up through snowbanks, but in long wild waves. From this end, the light was before her, not behind her, and she turned to see that it was indeed a cave, at least on this end. The rock was so dark and smooth, it still resembled a large hole rather than a structure. There were birds overhead, and green underfoot, and she pulled her hands from the muff, opened her cloak, and wandered forth, not intending to go too far lest she _really_ lose her way.

She could hear a squeak, and a tap, as though against a plank or a board, nearby, and soon found a tended garden and indeed, a whole attached mess of wooden planks in the shape of a house.

Alice stepped closer to the frame of trees and pulled aside a large glossy breadth of bougainvillea in full bloom. Sitting in a chained bench swing on the rickety-looking porch of the beige little place—it was really more like a cabin, but its careful condition suggested consideration of ideas about how close cleanliness and godliness were—was a young man with orange hair and very round spectacles. Alice paused to view him carefully, as he was, in a glaringly obvious way, not of the Wonderland.

The young man was dressed plainly, neatly, but had an air about him that suggested he was perhaps an ordinary bank clerk, bookkeeper, or perhaps a doctor. His trousers were a plain color, his waistcoat was a subtle, muted pattern, and though his sleeves were rolled back, he seemed completely at his ease. She watched him pull a plain silver pocketwatch from a pocket and flick it open, no crumbs flying out or jam dripping onto his socks. And then quite suddenly he looked up, and right at her.

"Hi," he said in a strange accent. He lifted a hand in some sort of greeting before he stood politely, and Alice came out of the bushes to stand at the two steps leading up.

"How do you do," said Alice.

"I'm well, thanks." Alice blinked, for she had not gotten a response quite like that in some time. "That's an awfully heavy coat you have on, miss." She was still processing the fact that this young man seemed to have proper manners. There was a crackling tinkling sound when he lifted the clear glass of ice and mint sprig, sweltering its cool drops all over the porch, up to his mouth to sip what was left. She got a better view of him now, his light hair fixed into the loose, careless pompadour of a sometime academic, his pince-nez very close, the lenses small. It smelled like honeysuckle here. "Well," he continued at her silence, "Aren't you uh, warm in that? I could take it for you."

"I'm terribly sorry, I didn't mean to bother you," said Alice politely. He smiled a bit, and shook the glass again.

"Oh, you are absolutely no bother." He laughed a bit awkwardly. "It's a nice day, it's been so warm here lately, and anyway, we don't really get too many visitors. Emma will be glad to see you, she does enjoy her socializing, and a fresh face is worth a pound of gold to her. I'm Quentin, by the way." She waited, but he did not follow the prompt and ask her for her name, and so she had to tell him rather baldly. He simply nodded in response, a jerking motion not unlike what a horse before a cart would make upon passing down a familiar street.

"That's fine," said Quentin, looking at her. "That's fine."

* * *

"Ahhhh...!" he said, laughing congenially, "You really are a formidable opponent at this game. I'll point out, though, that because we are playing under Tarkington's Differential, and as we have elected to play indoors on a Tuesday in the pink of spring, Tudor Rules are in effect."

"Your timetable is off!" she replied, and he gave her a politely surprised look. "I believe spring rules only apply if the railway is under construction in a southern hemisphere."

He wrinkled his nose in critical judgment. "Well, I am sure we can find a happy medium, then, can't we? I'll open Kew Gardens since you so smartly blocked me from taking an Early Closing variant at Elephant and Castle. Push."

"Queen's Passage."

"King's Entry." The girl with corkscrew curls snorted so hard that she nearly inhaled her drink, and they took a moment to both laugh uproariously, indulgent in the brief bawdiness, hard enough that they had to right the tea-service again.

"Hmm," said his companion after a pause to nibble at the quiche and compose themselves. She thought a moment before a lambent light came into her eyes, and she spoke as though spurred toward divinity. "I accept, of course, the inbound player exclusion, but the Amendment to the Gorky Clause does allow me to slidearm at Hampton…" They both sat silent in awe, and then the girl looked at him, those glorious curls haloed by sunset. She looked into his eyes, and murmured, "Mornington Crescent in two."

It was a devastating move. Excrutiating. He nearly fell out of the wicker chaise lounge. But he gamely and heroically managed to remain upright, and slowly tapped his foot up and down.

By Gum, she was brilliant, and her perfect choice of move was difficult to breeze past. He reached down for a Princess cake, offering her one in turn. They both enjoyed the complex flavor, after all, and there was no reason to not be gentlemanly and sporting before he trounced her at this game.

"Very well. I must say, your choosing to bypass Aldwych, _though certainly an assumed play,_" (and here they both tilted their heads back and chuckled, for no one is silly enough to go through _Aldwych _but complete idiots)_ "-_is a shy move rather than a safe one. Indeed, even talking of such a move creates a switchlead on the Jubilee—you really are boxing yourself in by not playing that obvious F and O lateral loop..."

He blinked, and suddenly wondered where she'd gone, where the game had gone off to—he had a very good explanation to finish, but she wasn't there. It was just him. His fingers were drumming out an absent pattern against his knee—that was what had pulled him away, only now it was turning into a slightly different beat, with an emphasis on the third tap instead of the fourth, and he played it out a few times, fascinated by how everything began to blend together until the taps were hardly taps at all, more a sliding or a flexing, all at once.

Then he was clenching his fingers back into his palm; the glove was stretching painfully across the traitorous digits, but it stopped them from carving splits into the flesh. He pushed very hard so his fingers would stop tapping, stop distracting him. He let go, and fully felt the keenness of the exhaustion again.

The Hatter looked around the room and searched for the long rectangle of gray, only just visible, perhaps because of clouds tonight, and then waited with ebbing patience for his mind to go back again.


	17. Chapter 17

Half my life is in books' written pages  
Lived and learned from fools and from sages  
You know it's true  
All the things come back to you

Aerosmith, "Dream On"

* * *

Quentin certainly liked his books. Alice was thinking on this, passing over the filled shelf-walls inside, a glass of lemonade in hand while the young man in question stood across the room, squinting out the window, careful not to draw too near her lest he make her feel put upon or untoward. He had one hand in his pocket, jingling some coins together ever so often. It smelled like honeysuckle even inside the cabin, but she could see no vases set out, nor any issuance of the climbing vine nearby that she could see.

"Have you read all of these?" she asked, shifting her weight off a squeaky floorboard. "You have so _many_ books that I wonder how you have time for them."

"There's… plenty of time now. I'm still working through them," he replied. "Stopped about…" He crossed the room, placed his hand in a space between two of them about halfway down the northern wall, "…here," he said, and retreated to where he had been near the window. Alice folded her hands at the small of her back and tilted her head sideways to view the titles. Carefully arranged by genre and then author family name, just as she would have done. And lucky too that the books were relatively proportional to each other, there being no tomes overlapping or so tall as to be squeezed in atop the others.

"There's Emma," he said, and moved so suddenly to go onto the porch that by the time Alice turned her head, he was already gone and the door had shut once with a humid clack. She followed, and squinted in confusion, for he was still alone outside.

Approaching the house by way of the hazy sunlit field—Alice thought of the phrase _coming through the rye_—was a tall dark woman with features growing daintier and sweeter the closer she came. In her hand was a small novel, and she was singing to herself under her breath. Alice looked up at Quentin, half-expecting to find upon his face the expression of relief upon seeing love's fair face again, but he was in truth rather mixed on the subject, remaining stoic, peculiar at his haste in going out to meet the lady.

Emma stopped at the lowest stair to look up at them, and Alice read the spine of the book—_Armance_, it said.

"Good afternoon, Miss Emma," said Quentin evenly. "Nice day for a walk, isn't it?" He addressed her with such familiarity that it seemed almost a politesse in itself, eschewing the tradition of formal addresses. Neither of them reflected on it, nor seemed to think it odd.

"Mmm," said Emma with a bored, lofty air, not even looking about her at the admittedly lovely afternoon.

"And where have you been off to?" Alice looked over his profile; he _was_ relieved at seeing Emma, but the feeling only went as far as having a third member of the party, a chaperone, to make things less awkward or unseemly. There was no sense of these two being frosty, but they certainly were not close friends—at least Quentin wasn't.

"That indefatigable man asked me to look over decorations for a _soiree_." The woman gave Quentin a sardonic and significant look. "'E is so clear, like a little glass bell, it is very strange to hear that others find him so… enigmatic." She turned, and seeing her there, was more interested in Alice now, and said to Quentin in her richly toned accent, _« Qui est-ce ? »_

"Oh, forgive me, I'm so rude, Emma—" said Quentin, introducing them, and Alice felt herself curtsey without really thinking about it; she simply seemed to deserve it, the curve of her ivory cheek, the darkness in her eye, her brows so clean and smooth.

"How do you do," said Alice. The lady tilted her head in turn, and her deep lips, clarity within the heart of the rose, smiled back at the blonde on the porch.

_« __Enchanté, »_ she murmured. "I am Emma, as you hear from Monsieur Quentin. Your dress is so lovely," continued the woman, stepping up to join them and taking Alice's arm in the kind way that a new friend does and apparently resisting the emotional urge to reach out and touch the girl's sausage curls, "And this ribbon in your hair! What a unique style, you must tell me where you buy them, I adore beautiful ribbons, all these _petits accessoires_."

"Oh," said Alice, glancing at Quentin, "Well-certainly."

"Why don't we all go inside," he said, already holding the door open. "Emma? Lemonade?"

"For all of us together!" she said, not looking away from her searching review of Alice's features, and what she found seemed quickly to cheer her, the feeling blossoming out like a flip-book of pictures, a sudden light pitching forth to obscure her earlier ennui.

"And _so_," continued Emma as they sipped, seated, "Where did you come from, may I ask?" The Frenchwoman had a queenly air, but was so curiously dressed now that Alice had a better look at her. A plain, though clean, dress, and a decently stitched little walking jacket over it, but such a fine watch pinned to her bodice that it _must_ have been quite a gift from someone with taste and wealth—or simply wealth, and Emma possessed of a keen desire to show off her taste with such an object.

"Well, the capital, though I imagine I was quite far from it by the time I found the tunnel," said Alice upon clearing her throat. Emma turned her head to look at Quentin, perhaps in need of translation or interpretation.

"Sorry, we don't quite understand."

"The capital, the seat of the monarchy," said Alice, as though this were perfectly

obvious. "In the Wonderland?" Now Emma raised her beautiful eyebrows at Quentin rather insistently.

"Wait, _the _Wonderland? The place with the queens," the young man said, puzzled. He leaned forward urgently to look into Alice's face.

"I thought the hole was blocked," this grave statement from Emma.

"You're _very_ far from the Wonderland," said Quentin, looking at Alice, "Quite far, actually." Alice leaned back in her chair and blinked a few times.

"It did seem odd that the snow had suddenly cleared up. I shouldn't be surprised, I really should never be surprised, and yet it never fails me…"

"Where in the Wonderland are you from?" this from Emma.

"I'm not really _from_ there," said a distracted and detached Alice, "I was… sort of there by accident to begin with."

"No one from the Wonderland has been here in—"

"Ages." Emma's voice had become… not curt, perhaps, but brisk, concerned, all business.

"Ages," Quentin agreed, nodding. "The monarchy always seems to be in such an uproar, all those stories about usurpations and beheadings. Has it changed very much?"

"I'm sure I couldn't tell you." Quentin shifted in his chair, crossed one leg over the other so that his pockets made a jingling sound again, and Alice had a sudden thought. "Who did you say has been here?"

Quentin and Emma exchanged an interesting private look, and she heard a strange twang come into her voice when she said,

"Was it an odd man with white hair?"

-and then a curious bubble pop somewhere in the very middle of her chest when Emma declared raptuously,

"Ah! You know him! What was 'is name, it 'as been so long," this last part to Quentin, who opened his mouth to answer when Alice intoned,

"The Mad Hatter." Quentin turned to look at her with some surprise upon this rejoinder.

"Is that really what they call him there?"

"Everywhere I go, he's there," said Alice, more to herself than anyone, "He still manages to influence things from… a jail cell, or wherever he is now."

"Oh, did they lock him up?" said Emma with pathos, one hand over her heart.

"He _was_ a bit of a radical," came Quentin's remark. "Brought that—" his eyes went to Alice, and he tilted his head, realizing. "That thing, I still have that box."

"Did you ever manage to get it open?"

"The Hatter gave you something?" The intrigue, Alice thought, was almost a comical set-up, but Emma flapped her hands at him urgently, her mood suddenly whipcracking back into energy and interest.

Quentin half-smiled at the Frenchwoman's display before he went to the only curio shelf in the parlor and removed a long black lacquer box with a pearl handle and a liquid shine, long, but shorter than how far he could stretch his arms. It had a slight burgundy twinge to the finish and a brass integrated lock at the outer lip between the halves.

"Not exactly a forgettable guy. He left this."

"What's inside of it?"

"We 'av been wondering ourselves," said Emma, her eyes wide. "'E was so memorable when 'e brought it."

"He left it on the shelf. Told us not to try to open it."

"He didn't give you a key? Just in case?"

"Nope. He said not to open it." Alice gave the shining box a strange look, as if it had offended her personally. How odd that the Hatter should go about leaving personal effects with other people—and yet how convenient, and then once again perplexing. This sat with her about as well as a sugar syrup; a rush of reassurance upon seeing something he had effected most curiously in the world, followed by a sick anxiety.

"What was he like, when he was here?"

Quentin wiggled his nose and looked up at the ceiling.

"Probably about what you remember, I'd guess."

"Manic," said Emma definitively. "But very distressed, 'e was worried about something, I think—"

"He was as odd as anyone with a name that starts with 'Mad' could be," Quentin said, glancing down at the seated Emma.

"Did he tell you anything else?" Alice asked. Quentin squintched his mouth up charmingly and the coins in his pocket jingled again. "Did he say why he was worried?"

"One day he was just here, and he asked if he could leave it with me as long as I didn't open it, and then he went away again. I haven't thought about it in so long."

"I do have some keys he left for me, perhaps it's on the ring," she thought aloud.

"You can open it?" cried Emma, who rose to come and watch Alice unlink the hoop of keys from within her skirts and go through them, remembering which opened this door and which she had never been able to mate to a lock.

"Such trust, giving you so many keys!" Emma spoke to Alice, but looked at Quentin over her shoulder.

"Temporary châtelaine; he does have so many keys that all seem to go to nothing, but I do wonder if it's in among these."

Quentin watched this, not saying a word, the light glinting white off his spectacles, and when Alice had the strange little silver skeleton key in hand, the one with the bitings all worn down, they three together stood over the black lacquered box, and Alice hesitated despite her intense curious need to know what was in it. She could not see them, staring as she was at the reflection off the box, but Emma and Quentin were looking at one another behind her back.

To open it, or not to open it? She had a vague feeling that perhaps _this_ was the reason the Hatter had recommended she not come here, but Alice fitted the little sliver of metal inside, not letting herself hope that fitting meant a match, and then, then she turned the teeth and opened the lip, the lacquer making a crack and squeak as it pinched together over back on itself.

And just like that, it was open, almost without thought or a real decision from her, and the taste of the sugar syrup was back in Alice's mouth, the uncanny feeling that this was far too easy.

But it was empty, she saw. There in the black box was a long indention in the shape of a capital T, as if there had once been housed a croquet mallet within, resting on the black velvet cloth inside. Quentin was squinting again, she could tell. Alice frowned too as she felt the inner lining, ran her fingers up and down the indention-

"Empty box…" said the bemused Emma,

-and to her surprise found a small silver thing, not quite the length of her little finger, sitting now in the middle of the lines on her palm. It might have been a bell hammer, this thing made of smooth silver, a surface almost liquid like mercury, glinting in the parlor light. Alice held it up between they three.

"What is it?" Quentin said low and soft.

"I don't know," she murmured back. "I've never seen anything like it before." It was part of a bracelet, perhaps; there was a slim hooking chain that had come out with the charm, and Alice strung the tiny thing through the hookloop and then onto her slender wrist.

"All that box for a bracelet?" Quentin said with a bit of disbelief, "I mean, it isn't that we aren't glad to know you and all, but, ah—it's a long way to come for a piece of jewelry." Alice let the charm drop down and spin around on itself, catching the light.

"I don't think it's jewelry," said Alice.

There was a knocking sound, and a young woman with pale hair and striking eyes was standing on the porch looking in through the open window. Alice nearly jumped upon seeing this apparition, who somewhat pointedly did not come in through the door.

"Oh," said Quentin, sounding surprised. "Hi Catherine."

"Hello," she said, in an accent Alice recognized. "Are you going to that party? I'm only asking because I wouldn't go if nobody else were. I do hate to go to these things alone." Her voice had once been pretty and she had probably said many sweet and eloquent things in her life, but Catherine's voice was now one of permanent melancholy, it seemed, for just as water flows over the rocks underfoot, time flows into and past our lives, the result clarifying some into beautiful striated gems while wearing others down into flat and dull nothingness after too long. Her face was enough to match the voice. Once lovely, the waxy whiteness and deep indentations under the bold eyes—the only thing giving clues to her vitality—especially as she stood in the shadows on the porch, lent her the air of a diaphanous figure not quite bound to the realm of the living.

"Would you like to go?" Quentin said to Alice. "Everyone's always invited, these things are on all the time; I'm sure it'd be interesting to have someone new there, but of course that's up to you."

"You must go!" cried Emma, "A party is so _boring_ without new people to talk to, and you won't be alone, Cathy, don't be so pessimistic all the time, and I can wear that new dress..."

Catherine, for her part, did not change her expression, which approached a state of moribundity.

"Very well," she spoke again her monotone, and drifted off to who knew where.

Emma was still in a digression upon the subject of her new gown when Alice managed to ask her if this party was the one she had mentioned earlier.

"Oui!" came the answer, followed by more meditations on the new dress, and Alice, with great knowledge and wisdom on these sort of things, politely refrained from mentioning the earlier, somewhat derisive attitude with which the Frenchwoman had spoken of this gathering, given her current zeal at the thought of being seen.

* * *

They approached the large mansion with the sprawling front garden lined by topiaries, Quentin having spent the walk quietly reassuring Alice that her frock was perfectly fine despite Emma's insistence on being given the chance to dress for dinner. The gown in question was a grand white tulle affair with a draping length of heavy silk flowers on the bias, flipping and floating around Emma's feet as she walked, busily arranging and re-arranging it, trying it this way, trying it that way, seven steps behind Quentin and Alice.

"Really, it is pretty informal," he said, "Sometimes I'm surprised by the way people show up out of the blue."

"What kind of person throws such a grand party all the time and invites everybody in the neighborhood?"

"The kind of person who has the… _means_ to do so," he replied delicately.

Here was the front door, and they paused to let the woman behind them catch up. Emma took a deep breath and made an odd gesture with her chin, apparently readying herself for this moment as though she would have a crowd of admirers within, all ready to fill her engagements for the evening. Quentin smiled, but it was more of a tolerant look than an amused one. It was a large, handsome house, with quite a lot of mirrors and artwork and strong shapes Alice didn't find especially attractive—no gilt or curliquing, but bold contrast, black and white, almost sparse in its cleanliness.

People, whom Alice of course did not recognize, but gave her passing glances, milled about, talking quietly. She looked around; there was no one to receive them. Emma sailed off in her massive skirts like a ship returning to its harbor slip to go peek around a door frame nearby before disappearing entirely, the tulle flashing and twisting about her prettily. Now Quentin did look appalled.

"Are you ill?" said Alice, who felt subtlety might actually work in this situation.

"No, no," he replied.

"Worried about Miss Emma? You look concerned for her, I am sure she will find a friend to talk to." They walked together deliberately past the room into which Emma had gone, an open parlor of sorts, and Alice's eyes went wide upon seeing there the queenly young woman surrounded by gentlemen offering her wine and their hand in dance. She turned back to him, but he was pointedly looking in another room across the hall.

Catherine approached them as they found their way into the library.

"I get so lost around here," she said, trying out a quavering smile on Alice while Quentin went for punch. "I come here every week, and I still don't know my way around."

"Who is hosting?"

"I met him once," said the pale lady with a slight frown, "But I admit I don't remember what he looked like. Pale, with light hair, I'm sure—not particularly dark or striking. Oh! Come see Violetta, but don't stand too near her-" she leaned in conspiratorily—"She's got the worst cough, it's not contagious, but can be violent if she isn't careful."

Violetta the striking brunette in the diamond necklace, with a little glass of framboise in hand and a voice like a song but nothing much to say, and with her Victor, a brooding German who kept looking over his shoulder as though someone were constantly there. Quentin brought her a glass, and they filtered away from the discussion on something called galvanism.

A vaguely good-looking young man in a tuxedo sifting through glass decanters on a table in the hallway looked up at them, and Quentin said,

"Please, meet Jay." Alice held out her hand, but instead of bowing over it or squeezing it politely, the man took her palm in his and pumped it up and down, Alice allowing this somewhat stiffly, having never shook hands quite so. "This is his house." Alice blinked; she had rather thought the man a servant.

"It's a very fine one." She could not quite think of any other assessment for the huge place. It seemed so empty, though full of things and people. She wondered if Jay truly lived here, all by himself, hosting parties for people who simply showed up.

"She's from the Wonderland," said Quentin, and Jay appraised her up and down, smiling in a way that creased his eyelids but did not extend any layers of warmth to his mouth. He nodded slightly, looking over her blonde hair.

"Nice to have you, thanks for coming," he said in an accent a bit different than Quentin's. "Please, look around at your leisure, I don't stand on formalities here, and the servants are at your disposal."

"Such fair grounds," said Alice after a pause, "Do you keep a stocked lake for fishing?" Jay gave a short laugh, and pointed with his hand out a set of large glass doors.

"There's a swimming pool outside there, if you care to see, it hasn't been used in a while," he said, and Alice was halfway out the door before she realized neither of them were following her.

"No," said Quentin charmingly, but with a sharp sigh, waving a hand, "You go on ahead. I'm not… partial to water, myself." His mouth looked so awkward as he said it. Jay suddenly appeared to see someone he recognized, cleared his throat and excused himself in a murmur, leaving Alice alone to step out into the dusk and gaze down into the clear waters to the tiles. A private bathing pool; she had never seen one constructed out-of-doors before. Alice was near the diving board when she heard a bright and cheerful-

"'Alo!" and there was Emma, smoothing down her hair and looking happily flushed, Alice hoped from dancing or the punch.

"I'm all alone out here, I should wonder at Mr. Jay not wanting to accompany his guests," she said, but it was a kind tone of voice.

"Monsieur Je' does not like the bathing pool," crooned Emma, wise as ever. "I do not know why 'e still 'as it if it is so offensive to 'im. Still, it is a fine thing to 'ave when one is wealthy." Her eyes had a glossy shine as she said this.

"Quentin seemed not to like it either."

"Oh, Monsieur Quentin." Now her tone was not nearly so magnanimous or glowing. "So many problems, that one."

"But you are still friends, aren't you?"

"We are neighbors, and it is better to talk to one's neighbors than to sit about alone with no one, though sometimes I think he would rather not talk to anyone. It can be so difficult to get him out of that cottage."

They listened to the crickets and the little frogs making a pretty little sound for a moment.

« _À ta santé_, » murmured Emma, holding up her glass. They clinked and sipped.

"Perhaps he is a true academic devoted to studies," Alice said low.

"He _is_ the obsessive type," and Alice thought she heard the woman say _soeur_ or _coeur_ under her breath, but it could have been either, and she supposed it was not for her to hear anyway. The door slid open, and Catherine leaned out.

"Jay is asking for you, Emma, he says you owe him a game of Blackjack, but he's going to win anyway, so—" her head disappeared inside to listen to someone repeat what they had told her to say. "So you might as well forfeit now."

This had the effect of igniting a light under Emma, so quickly did she stand and with a smile ready for a social battle stride into the hall, Alice come trotting to see, but straying a bit to avoid being drawn into their politics.

The haughty Frenchwoman was in the middle of the parlor, hands akimbo, speaking for all to hear.

"You 'sink that you are so _fantastique_," spat Emma passionately and disdainfully toward the door where stood the man in the tuxedo. "'Sinking that you are the only man who 'as _seen me as I am,_" this in her most dramatic voice, "Wooing me with nylons and the _chocolat_ bar_. _I see your ways, Monsieur Je'. Do not 'sink that you are so clever as all this, I 'av been there, there is no need for this _tire_some charade." But there was a hint of charm to her surliness, just the tiniest ray of possibility backlighting her Francophonic sassmouthery, and the man in the pressed tuxedo apparently knew it very well, for he smiled smoothly, and he looked very mysterious and proud of himself.

* * *

Alice bid farewell to her host and the party not long after, and she was glad for Quentin's mannerly invite to escort her back to the tunnel between the trees.

"Goodbye, Quentin," said Alice, adjusting her handwarmer. "I hope we shall meet again someday."

"So do I," was his answer. "Goodbye. Have a safe return."

As she stepped back into the silent snowy forest, she stumbled, for the inside of the warmer had caught on the little chain. Alice drew her hand from with, uncaught the tangle, and turned the little hammer between her fingers, wondering how she had got out from under all that without any answers.


	18. Chapter 18

I kept a chain upon my door  
that would shake the shame of Cain  
into a blind submission  
Yoko Kanno

* * *

Alice found herself forcing open several doors in the two weeks prior to what the Hatter would, in later better days, refer to with some detachment as his abulia. One of these was less immediate in its significance, but it came first, and so I shall tell you of all this chronologically.

She dreamt of him that night after the tunnel in the woods, not in some romantic moonlit walk or gazing at one another dancing at a ball, but walking through the forest, silently, striding ahead of her, and she hadn't thought to question him at all. He was so urgent, speechless, that she wondered if he even knew she was there. Halted at the edge of the treeline, he turned, looked at her, the low-lying brushland out over his shoulder. His face was vague and hazy in this dream, Alice not really looking at him, but at the clodding land and his vest, and everything else, and her mind couldn't reckon with his profile, as though she was beginning to forget the pattern of freckles or the shape of his nose, the widow's peak at the front of his messy hair. She couldn't quite remember what he looked like, she couldn't fill him in.

Alice was frankly concerned about this when she awoke; determined, dressed in a dusty pink frock with tiny grey stripes and over that her cloak, was outside with her arms folded, breathing steam, gazing at the building which she had vantaged from the roof earlier. It was more like a remise or a rather large gardening shed from this level, and the windows were a filthy smeared yellow, never having seen a clean cloth in their existence. The large double carriage doors would not open, but it was with an unperturbed air that Alice crossed over and tried the side door, and stepped inside while it chattered from her unladylike heave at it.

This first event smelled not of horse tack but of something heavier than kitchen grease and a thick layer of dust—confirmed by the large brown sack canvas covering a huge something consuming the building. It hadn't been touched in a while, and Alice undid a lash, lifted the canvas before she had the presence of mind to take a breath, doubled over coughing now with the great thing exposed while her eyes watered, moments slipping before she got the chance to actually see it.

She did, suddenly dropped the end of the cloth and set to coughing again, this time going near one of the windows to get out of the path of the rolling wave of dust. Startling great thing. A large bug-like expression, two huge eyes that made her arm jump, involuntary. But it wasn't alive. She carefully lifted it again, peeling up the corner. It was sort of a... sleigh, perhaps, with these sloping curves on what might have been wheels rather than slick blades. It would have been rather pretty in better light, the cream paneled body, brass curliqued trim, smoothly polished brown knobs and brass dials and such cheerful red leather upholstery, seats for two. Alice lowered the dustcloth with experienced caution now and went back into the house for a cup of tea to think about this.

The Hatter's many mechanical proclivities, unusual for a tradesman, she had before chalked up to the baseline strangeness of the Wonderland. But now, deconstructing his lamps and pipes and amateur structural engineering and clocks, Alice wondered why he bothered still with the hats at all. Wouldn't a steam-engine service in every house command a fine fortune? Why keep these things to himself?

The second thing which led to a long chain of consequences in this line of the story was, in truth, a sequence of events in and of itself. Recall the hammer strung upon Alice's wrist, the little charm there, as she paces to and fro in the severe black and white kitchen, swinging with her steps, reflecting weak little rays of light onto the tiling and the wallpaper. Visualize now Alice quite forgetting herself, caught up in remembering the night of the ball and the Hatter, his sleeves rolled up, twisting together the little wire cages, so detached that she turns too fast, lets slip the cup from the saucer, and out and down it goes.

Do you have it in your mind, her jolted irritation? The strange filtering of emotions, whether to mind it, to offer to pay for a replacement—if he returns, if it even matters, such a small thing? The way she lets her arms flop to her sides and sighs, goes for it where it has dashed against the baseboard, putting her hand out against the wall for support to reach down to the halves of the cup?

The hammer smacked against the cellar door, sparkling clinquant though Alice didn't notice, and she might not have noticed the door stiffly ajar, unyielding, had not the saucer slid forward so that her fingers grasped around it and then wedged into the jamb.

Again, the door rattled after she had squeaked, forced it hard this time, rubbing her shoulder, and she was staring down into an entirely black space. Alice put the balls of her feet on the edge of the step and tilted back her head to stare directly upward, imagining quite far above her the great bleak roof, piecing together a map of how many floors this house could possibly have.

She went for a candle.

Delayed again her view of this new thing when Alice reached the bottom of the stairs, instead her hand lighting the lamp on the wall and bringing it to a soft glow before turning. And well she did, for as soon as the candle was out and the gas was up, she dropped the pillar and let her mouth go slightly open.

A cellar, no. Where the Hatter had been hiding his _self_, yes.

It can be a difficult thing to describe the physical manifestation of the inside of someone's head, but the first thing Alice knew was that _this_ was what she had been expecting upon her first admittance to such a tremendous place, so much concentrated information pouring itself out in a still life waterfall. _This_ room, this cave of bookshelves, filled in with tomes stacked to trapezoids and wherever else they would fit, _these _broad tables bent into gentle u-shapes from the weight of maps and papers and stacks and paint cans and wires and clockfaces and an orrery and decapitated faceless wooden head hat forms and white busts of ancient bearded men. _This_ L-bend pipe randomly dropped from the ceiling very inconveniently, hovering in the middle of the room, _that_ threadworn chartreuse velvet wingback chair with a polka-dotted ottoman before it.

Tracks suspended from the low ceiling, snaking in and out of curves, a little toy steam locomotive sleeping frozen over the wall where the curling edges of blueprints overlapped one another into incomprehensibility. Hat sketches with them tilted this way and that, unnecessary views of their dark insides, Greek symbols and numbers, a wild menagerie of ideas all thrown together until they stuck, a sudden thrust of knowledge and ideas all uncontrollable, coming out at once, perhaps spidering together connecting, perhaps all dead ends.

He was obviously quite clever to the point of perhaps genius; she cast an eye about to search for a diploma upon the wall, but then he seemed more like the experiential scholar, carving his own education out of life itself rather than absorbing it through a mortar board. It was curious, for he did seem rather proficient at physics from all the jotted notes and scraps of paper tossed about in equal measure with form patterns and designs—she gently moved a stack of papers and found fabric samples and a kitchen whisk with a large gear wheel attached to its side. Alice wrinkled her nose and tried her best to replace things where they'd been.

Other people's disorganized spaces were the effects of spoliation, making them seem unreliable, warning off anyone with good sense; this room had the effect of making the Hatter a rather fascinating sort of person, full of secrets and stand-offish mystery, not that she didn't already think it of him. But it was a smacking great mess, almost as though he had been hiding down here, or had just left, just to go upstairs for something a bit ago. It was so evidentiary, so full of him, even a left-foot aqua and white spectator shoe shoved beneath the leg of a wobbly end table holding up a glass decanter he might have once used as an aquarium—either that or he had let the tea grow into a freshwater forest. Alice removed it gently and substituted a book, massaged the shape back into the shoe.

The girl might have gone back up the stairs after observing this and inspecting the large green and blue and brown blob he had painted—rightly guessing it to be a map similar to the globe upstairs, though the ceiling was not a large enough canvas for this project—had she not passed the chair once more, and seen what gathered in folds and piled in its depths.

She brought up the dark green felt work coat, and held it out, watched the sleeves settle into gravity, one cuff up, the other full out. A front pocket lipped out at her, she drew the fabric over her arm to reach into it and found an upside down tea cup—_of course_—which she held up, juggling the coat so that it sort of rumpled under her chin, and it smelled, wafting, like a perfect pot of tea, no sugar, no lemon, no cream, just precision timing and the peak of sharp flavor.

Now advancing toward the slightly less laden table to find a ladder upon which was hung a pair of welding goggles, their lenses dark. Looking into them she could see her reflection, but on the wall behind them was a mark that made her lungs hurt quite a lot, and very sudden too, and she stayed still for a moment to quell the sensation. Alice set the goggles on a stack of books nearly up to her waist and on impulse and without contemplation pressed her hand into the mark, brushing it to feel the physical change on the plaster.

His gloveless left handprint in bright royal blue ink or paint, whichver it were, he had reached for the wall, his long fingers outfanned, such a brief moment that there was a hole in his palm, fingers floating, detached, ever so smeared, no fingerprints. He could have easily hooked his fingertips over hers if he'd been here, her little hand filling in the gaps, making it all whole. Alice slid her hand down, listening to herself breathing, and took a step back. There was no melancholia, no depression in the dove grey vagaries she had been living through over the last few weeks, merely a strange distant twisting sensation.

Oh God, and there it was. She tripped over it, this expectation she'd been perched before just so. He was real; the understanding glow was still soft, but she was beginning to see it, his realness, his absent existence. Keeping it at arm's length had been managable with _objects_, with coats and shoes, and things out of his head; _things_ lost their meaning as soon as he was gone but this, this. _Here he was_, as if to say _I was here and I am here_, and she felt like crying, only she didn't.

Alice folded her hands lest she grow too ashamed of herself and really was now about to go back up the stairs before nearly walking straight into the _truly_ inconvenient piece of plumbing, which, now that she trailed it, led straight through another doorway and into a dark corridor running under the house.

Following it a few steps was easy enough, for the light was still good, and the pipe turned to go back up into the ceiling once more, but after that, it was very dark; the corridor kept going, a squeezy little tunnel to somewhere.

Alice went for the candle again.

Not a frightening tread by any means, despite the tangled running mass of steam pipes overhead, as he'd laid down a rather reassuring rug with gold and red swirls. But a long one, indeed, for Alice kept walking until she could hardly see the pinprick of light over her shoulder from the cellar studio anymore. Surely by now she was past the edge of the house, the edge of the forest, for no one's house was nearly this long, but then the floor began slanting up as though a ramp. When Alice came out into the room at the end of the tunnel, she hardly had the rug beneath her feet in mind, but the question of how he had got so much of it laid down in that infinite, unbroken pattern is a question I should like to have answered out of idle curiosity.

But it is understandable that Alice would be occupied with the contents of _this_ _new_ room, perhaps more a hall, for it had stone ceilings and walls, filled with a dripping echo and intermittent rumbling sounds from far away. There were two short set of steps on either side leading up to doors punched out of the middle of the wall, but in the very center of it was a brown mass of dustcovered sundries. Only now was Alice conscious of thready dipping fear in her stomach, holding the candle high, as though rats and snakes and spiders and all manner of things could start crawling out of the boxes and canvas-cloth shapes. No gas lamp here, merely a sconce, but Alice eschewed it and minded to keep the candle aflame in her hand.

She started with a reassuring boxy-shaped thing, pulled the cover off it to find, much to her innate horror, that it was a large golden sarcophagus belonging far better behind glass and among shushing curators, inlaid with painted blues, the kohl-rimmed face staring up. The cover went back onto it, and she tried to make certain not to turn her back on it in case something inside came to life and got ideas about how delicious was _she_. A neat stack against the wall near one of the stairsteps seemed less terrifying, and she gingerly brought away the cover. At first it just seemed a large brown square, but Alice set the candle on the stoop and made to observe; they weren't the torching pastorals currently on the walls of the house.

And studied the next, and studied the next after that, growing more wide-eyed as she flipped through them. Formal paintings, portraits, of stoic men all with rather large noses and their freckles downplayed _sotto voce_ by the forgiving artist. Here lapels, there smart uniform dress, medallions pinned, a waxed moustache in the mix, but all with that nose, those eyes.

People do not keep storage rooms filled with portraits for no reason, even if they generally lack a good sense of reason themselves. These were no famed collectibles, no art worth preserving for the salvation of some lost period in military portraits—here consigned to posterity were the Hatter's family members. Alice felt sure of this, and flipped through them again, and then again.

Not a single woman, nor any labels like "Great-Uncle Rockmeteller" or "Rear Quartermaster of the _H.M.S. Calcutta_" to give her any clue, for all the little metallic plates at the bottom were blank, scratched off. Surely not all could be brothers; there was enough variation and age among them that perhaps they were offshoots, distant relations well remembered. The last one in the stack was facing the wall, larger than the rest, and she took it out, nearly falling over trying to turn it.

Familiar, this particular man in the portrait, and it took her several minutes of squinting before she knew him—it was the man in the ivory painting in the odd room upstairs, only here he was illustrious, grander, his lapels and festoons bigger and clearer, epaulettes stacking him tall and high. He had aged; it was easy to distinguish rank. A hero, broad admiral's hat and chelengk, bright stars upon him, staring off to the side with a visible protrusion of profile. Alice studied his countenance another moment. A brave but severe, distant sort, his hand tucked into the breast of his coat. Here visaged the peak of a career, beginnings of the end: retirement into the annals of glory, a reward. Stern, looking to the left to ward off nemeses. A patriarchal nose. She shoved the paintings back against the wall with a loud clack and stood still a moment.

Alice had no proof, but she gauged her high suspicion to be that this was the man's father, evidence sight unseen. The Hatter's father, a Naval officer. Haberdashery not running in the family. A severe man, a critical man, a man impossible to live up—_no, stop, stop, stop. Just stop. _Fearful of starting up some speculative far-flung fiction sprung from the lusher forests of her own imagination, she toed about, inspecting other boxes of books, of toolboxes, an anvil over in the corner, but nothing else here quite took her fancy, nor found her casting her gaze upon it again like the stack of portraits, at least until she began to wonder what was behind these doors.

The one near the paintings had a polished handle and an oiled lock, inviting her to try the keys until it opened at will; rather a nice change from so rude the doors previous. It glided open, and she was looking into a short closet, before there was another door. Stepping up, Alice tried that one too—and found what she should have been expecting, given the circumstances, and that was indeed the back workroom of the Hatter's shop. Everything interconnected; how nice to avoid a rainy day. But here in mind Alice thought; she was among the buildings in the capital, to be sure—where did the other door go? The Hare's map of the capital had long escaped her, but recollections of government buildings and a stationer's came to her.

Ah, now this door, this other one—this was the hardest of all. No key would fit, no pressing her weight into it would budge, no coaxing it to open, no shaking and rattling, no final petulant kick and then hopping wince of pain would induce it. In fact, it probably would have laughed rather gaily at that last part.

Of course this made Alice want ever so badly to know what it was in there; she was not one to practically bust a toe and so easily lift a white flag over her own curiosity; slowed, perhaps, limping, maybe, but a renewed vim saw her stand up straight. She put her fists into her hips, but the chain caught on her wrist and she spent a moment untangling the hammer, then held it up to look at it. Well, last resorts and cries of eureka usually came roundabout. It was all on a lark and to relieve her frustration: Alice pinched the handle between her fingers and gave the tarnished handle a little smack, but then unbent and looked at it, turning it and going to the light.

Was her little finger getting shorter? She could have sworn the thing was only to the end of her littlest nail, and now it was easily from the tip of her middle finger to the center of her palm. Heavier, too. She was inspecting it, going back toward the stairs, arm out to turn the handle, and went crashing right through the open door, the candle getting a better landing than her elbow.

Alice lay on her stomach, blinking at this new development, pulled up her arm to look at the hammer again.

"Well well," she told it. "Aren't you an interesting little jobbie." Pushed up with a sigh, the little yacht known as the _H.M.S. Alice_ and all its painted sails and bustles righted, and stood looking about at about the largest hall she'd ever been in. The ceiling went far, far above, and she could see spindly buttresses and terrific lengths of paning to create a vast glass ceiling, but it was mostly obscured by everything in the room.

It was the museum, and quite defunct it was, being absolutely frigid owing to a broken window up along the wall. She held high the candle, but it only went so far; there were blobby dark shapes in the pathetic clouded light and not much else. Perhaps that was a zeppelin, over there a tremendous shell-shaped vehicle? How would horses pull something that large? So many dark shaded spiky things with the strong scent of metal and oil and dust. Racks of guns she could see, so these were war machines, no doubt, but she never got a better look; through came a gust of wind by the burst glass, and there went the candle.

Holding quite still to avoid the breath of panic putting its lips just so to the nape of her neck, the better to startle her with, Alice turned to face the door she had bumbled into, the light grey but still there, and saw with some interest waxing her fear a small blue light, paces away. Beneath a drooping tarp half-slid off a box of munitions was a little glass apothecary jar, and in this jar was a blue flame, warm and flickering as Alice wrapped her hands around it.

She held it close to her, and had enough light now to see her way back through the tunnel and into the cellar and up the stairs and into the kitchen again, but Alice was preoccupied with the chatoyant light, her glance never passing over the odd pockmark that had appeared on the cellar door where the hammer had bumped it earlier, smooth and round, about the size of a golf ball, really.

Alice was not so very tired: the chalk-white afternoon had not quite faded into charcoal, and despite her long walk, she felt loose and free and easy, sliding her cloak back over her shoulders and slipping the jar—it was so sweet and cupped so gently in her palm, the little thing—into her handwarmer, traipsing out, breezing through the front door and down the walk. The brief consideration of stepping out onto the frozen river was blessedly replaced by her decision to try something she'd had in the back of her mind for a little while, stepping brightly into the tree portal and closing it behind her.

"Take me where I need to go," she said with verve, and waited in the silence. Tentative hand pushed out at the door again, and she stepped out into the most literal example of a winter Wonderland since Currier and Ives dreamed up some notion about lithographs or something. White everywhere, unbroken and unsullied white, no horizon, right up into the sky. She wrinkled her nose, caught a snowflake, turning all around and wishing she had a pair of dear little golden skates to fit onto her boots; what a pretty scene that would make. She stopped, not startled, but delighted, though the expression hadn't worked its way past the surprise.

There was a large carousel sitting in the middle of the forest, its horses still and silent, jolly pastel blues and pinks and yellows and greens and orange, like a gigantic petit four cake, all there for her to enjoy, all there from the bidden winking urging of the tree—_go on, dear, go have some fun for once_, she rather thought it sent a message. Up she jumped, and searching for the handle to turn it on, hear the calliope let off some steam, have her pick of the horses, and then there was suddenly someone standing there and Alice's whole middle pinched together and she jumped back against the centerpost of the ride, for the person standing there had been there before Alice had even come onto the scene, but was rather difficult to see, dressed as she was in a full-length white coat and with her pale hair and pale face, there was hardly a contrast against the snowy ground.

The Duchess lifted a carefully-smoothed eyebrow and asked Alice in her low, refined voice which betrayed no surprise upon see the girl there, "What an unexpected meeting; what are you doing out here all alone?"


	19. Chapter 19

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.  
Homer

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage...  
Richard Lovelace

* * *

"What are _you_ doing out here," said Alice in a calculating fashion, eyeing the mysterious woman before her with a challenging, almost flippant, air, before catching herself with a frown and adding politely, "Your... Highness."

Whatever assumptions the Duchess had been making about the girl standing before her (and indeed, she was operating under several), the cool woman in white velveteen would not find their following conversation a reason to be perplexed. She rather thought them a going concern, the idiosyncrasies of her subjects and land, and wasn't the type to ruin a nice lie-down over it. This not only for Alice's having spent so much time among mad people that she was understandably apt to mimic their ways after a while, but also because of what Alice wound up telling her-which would occupy the stately woman for quite some time.

"Out for a breather," replied the Duchess, her voice ever a smooth enigma. "An impromptu visit; I rarely make it out to these border lands anymore." They both looked about the open catch for a moment and listened to the snow falling. "It all starts to look the same in weather like this." She breathed in through her nose, and a bit of steam escaped her in the neatest fashion. "But you have not answered my question, which I asked you first."

"Taking a turn about, myself," said Alice, casual, going over the plaster golden bells carved on a white pony nearby.

"How perspicacious; we are of one mind," said the Duchess, and moved her mouth into something like a little smile. Alice gave her a sidelong look, and the woman gestured lovely to a nearby sleigh on the platform, hand in black glove. "Shall we sit down and talk of many things? It has been _so _long since we've seen you last." Alice had absolutely no intention of sitting down with this woman, let alone voluntarily spending five minutes breathing near her, but did not declare it in quite those terms.

"I must beg your gracious pardon," she intoned, sniffing with the loftiest of nose-raises, which really did not help the fact that her nose was growing chill. "I had it not in mind to stay out long, for it is rather cold, and I am not feeling well."

"Perhaps I shall amend your title to something more descriptive," replied the monarch, and Alice turned toward her to see that she was amused, "Lady Mondegreen might suit you. You did seem, although perhaps I misjudged you, shall I say, _exuberant_ upon first seeing this old thing." Alice took a moment to walk about and inspect the old thing of which the Duchess spoke. Images carved into the center rotella gave sequential dramatization to a man falling in love with a woman and promptly turning into a wendigo before chasing her like a hine o'er the hills. Rhapsodies of love and scissored jaws. It would have been disturbing in any other shades but these charming pastels with ivory inlay.

"I wonder what it's doing all the way out here," said Alice to herself, "Probably there was a gigantic tree here, and someone carved this out of it, and it plays _Mars, Bringer of War_ or something."

"Actually," and here Alice nearly jumped, for she had gotten somewhat lost in her own speculation and the Duchess was suddenly standing next to her, "It plays _Tales from the Vienna Woods_, of that I am sure, but I remember hearing from someone once that it's broken." Alice leaned in what braver observers might have categorized as an openly petulant fashion against a nearby barley pole.

Toward the Duchess Alice felt the tender, sisterly sympathies she might have felt for a scorpion recently taken up residence in her slipper. The woman who pushed the Hatter upon her as guide and jerked him back with a hook just as they were starting to get on, but more importantly as things were beginning to _make sense_, she thought insistently. That was right, wasn't it? But she was Alice, and this in itself created a conflict between her obligations in politesse and the overwhelming urge to poll this woman's feelings on the controversial political issue of a good kick in the shins.

"Where is the Hatter?" she said, ever careful to tiptoe softly about issues, approaching them with delicacy, never one to suddenly become rash and get directly and pointedly to the heart of the matter with tones-of-voices and arms-crossed-over-selves.

"The papers say he is exiled," said the Duchess, apparently musing, for she was suddenly brushing her gloved fingertips over the gilt on a large cricket's harness.

"For treason. Are they correct?"

"They do exaggerate in their way," was the reply Alice got.

"Well, where _exactly_ is that... if I may ask? Some sort of prison?" The Duchess unbent, a thoughtful expression reaching her, and said,

"He is where he is, and that is an idle place indeed," in a voice about half a mile away. Alice stood with her shoulders squared, giving the woman's profile a look coming up on disgusted loathing, but managed to reign it back in. "I have often speculated if... if he is not the cause of so many problems."

"How can one man be the cause of every problem, I don't quite see," said Alice in a quieter way upon hearing this reflection. The Duchess looked up from inspecting her gloves.

"Given enough time and space, even in the smallest amounts, anyone can effect the proper course of events."

"Why was it necessary to exile him at all? Or without any warning, or a proper trial? The Queen of Hearts at least did that..."

"I am not the only decision-maker," she said simply. "And I act in what I perceive to be the best interests of this country. But I will not shy from accrediting my own decisions, be their outcomes good or bad." She took a sudden breath, "Did he tell you anything that night?"

"_Cherchez la femme_," said Alice, and felt very curious for having said it, for the way the Duchess simply outright asked about the night, it was offputting knowing that she knew what had happened.

"And you think, I think, he meant me?"

"I don't know who else he might have meant." Alice adjusted her hands inside her warmer.

"What about you?" A crow began to heckle them from nearby, and Alice turned to watch it flap its wings at them from across the clearing aggressively before launching into the sky. "Find the woman, find yourself."

"It is possible, though at a moment like that I can't see him asking me to reflect upon it—I am sure he was more concerned of his own safety, and of that precious hat." She felt like slumping down in the sleigh after all.

"Is there anything—" began the Duchess, "Anything at all about these people disappearing, that you know?" A strange twin star was beginning somewhere within Alice, a kind of contrition for having been so rude to this woman, whose features had changed genuinely into a sad worry, but also an unlabeled feeling regarding this worry over mysterious disappearances when she seemed herself to have the power and inclination to pull people out of thin air and sally them forth into idle places.

"It's something in the forest," intoned the girl in a low voice. "I've seen it, like a great whirling storm or dust devil, but the Mock Turtle thought it looked like a mirage or a sheet of water. You can hear it before it comes, a low buzzing and burbling—" They both looked at each other, both thinking the same unspoken name.

"No, the Jabberwock is long dead," said the Duchess evenly. She flexed her fingers and pulled gently at her collar, adjusting the diaphanous muffler beneath it, and Alice was struck for just a moment how the woman had her hair arranged in its usual twist, but so it covered her ears in the cold now.

"The March Hare is gone," said Alice finally, looking at the earlobes peeking out.

"I am sorry for it." And she did sound it.

"I tried to pull him out of the Hatter's hat," said sardonic Alice more to herself than anybody, "But I'm not enough of a magician, or I didn't reach far enough." The Duchess gave a short laugh, and was about to say something, but there came suddenly through the snow and the cold open air a train whistle so fresh and full of smoke they both looked up, and pretty soon a young page in a peacoat appeared and bowed.

"Well," said the Duchess, "This does cut short our conversation, but I must take my leave." The regal comportment upon her, she looked at Alice with a steady eye and made a strange gesture with her palm. "Mind you don't stray too far. Be seeing you." She blent quickly with the snow and was gone before she had rounded the merry-go-round.

Alice leaned against the pole nearby, running her finger over the little jar inside her warmer, staring off into space. She did feel slightly ill now—and tired, and frustrated, and useless. She should have tried harder to glean something out of the Duchess, anything important, thinking this now before she realized she was standing at the moment in the center scene when the man was holding a parasol over the shy lady. The parasol handle was a real handle, and it opened out to show the control box, with several switches, but a blank hole where a winding key should have gone. She took out the hammer, stuck the handle in the notch, and turned it, hearing a crank and a grinding clack as the levers engaged themselves. The calliope began slow and fidgety before popping a few times into its lively organ, and the fairy lights in the canopy flickered in jeweled patterns.

It did indeed play _Tales_, in a hooting tooting way, and the platform and the center revolved on separate speeds so the images turned into a zoetrope of the man endlessly courting the woman and then eating her, courting her and then eating her, until at last Alice let the box come round again and she turned the hammer back sideways, the lights flicking off, the sound cutting out, the horses all heaving to a sudden end, a great stillness coming into the forest. The sun was lowering, and she stepped off the platform.

"Hi, hang along there, wait! Hullo!" cried a voice in the woods.

"Hello?" said Alice, thinking perhaps the Duchess had forgot a glove.

"This way, over here!" She shuffled through the snow, looking all around, but there was no one, and it half occurred to her that it might have been a myna bird or some other trickster, and was just turning to go back.

"No, wait, really!" said the voice from high above her. She looked up and could see a figure standing on a branch in a bare oak tree. "Hullo!" it cried, waving its arm at her, "I saw the lights from the roundabout, I'm so glad you could fix it!"

"Oh, well, you're welcome," she ventured.

"Come this way, she'll want to thank you properly," called the voice, the figure swung out, and Alice followed the trees that trembled and shook slightly as it progressed farther, where the forest grew a bit darker and the trees still had some leaves, or great drapey moss still hung. Low green lights sat among the notches in the pines. Voices above her conferred, one excited, one lower, solid. There was a long slow creak with the sound that a weed makes when it doesn't want to let go of the earth, and Alice turned full around to find herself nose to nose with an upside down woman.

Of course she started, not because the woman was upside down, or very close to Alice's face, but for the lack of warning; otherwise she might have taken this first meeting with a bit more aplomb off the mark.

"Hello," said the woman in a different voice from the first one. "And who might you be?"

"Er... Lady Mondegreen," said Alice on a whim. The woman was dangling from a very long piece of what looked like cloth rather than rope, and she reached out to wrap it about her legs and bring her head up proper.

"Huh!" said the woman, now with her legs going out in opposite directions in what looked to be a very painful contortion, but her face was bright and interested in this newcomer. "You're that girl everybody's on about, aren't you?" This lady had a very pointy nose that turned up at the end, and an energetic, athletic way about her that was not bulky or Amazonian, but spry and lean. But Alice was chiefly concerned with the arrangement of her glossy black hair, arranged into two neat buns at the back of her neck. It made her head look like one giant—"This is the Court of Clubs, you're quite welcome here!"

"Oh my," said Alice very slowly, and then roused herself. "Thanks very much, um...?"

"I'm the Queen, so you see," said the Queen of Clubs, and pointed with her finger out and thumb up at the tiny gold crowns on either side of her collar; her outfit was a black and white affair that had Alice struggling to keep her eyebrows in check, for it left no question as to the development of her muscle groups. "Page tells me you've fixed our roundabout, I'm awfully indebted to you, you know."

"Not at all," replied the girl. "Your... roundabout?"

"We used to be a circus," said the Queen, twisting herself a seat on the ribbon, "But the merry-go-round broke down, and we're stuck over here, and we don't come down at all, for just anybody, and so it's just been sitting there, rotting, I imagine."

"It works rather nicely now, and in good health, I think."

"_Brilliant_," said the Queen in genuine feeling, "How on earth did you manage to fix it? You must be a genius, you _must_." Alice was unsure about that.

"It only needed a winding key." The Queen opened her mouth and stared at Alice very wide.

"Good Heavens," she said now in quiet reverence, "I never think of these things myself." She turned over into a backflip and began to swing back and forth. "Would you do us the interminable honor of staying for perhaps a little while? Such intelligence; you can help us think up a way to get it crossed back over the border."

"Border?" Alice suddenly felt a low dip. Two wires and a bar were lowering into her plane of view, and another athletically-keened female with sharp hair cut to her chin appeared on the swing, and though it was a very narrow bar, she lounged upon it as one does a comfortable cushion.

"Ah, Page," the Queen said, "This is... you said Lady Mondegreen? What a curious name indeed! This is my daughter."

Alice thought it was rather curious that the princess was called Page, but apparently this was her name, and, as the Queen put it, "I don't have a Jack, for I have no son, and there is no sense in calling her a Jack, for she is not one at all, and I am glad to have her."

"You're in the Farisides now," said the Page, Alice recognizing her voice as the one in the wilderness, "I'm terrifically sorry, I got so excited, but you are in our jurisdiction now, and I do think Mummy will be glad to extend to you the privilege of entourage." The Queen nodded, pursing her lips, all content and pride. Alice was trying to catch her breath.

"Does this mean I can't get back?"

"Back to where, dear?"

"To the capital, I'm supposed to be there, I have a house and everything, I've got orders—"

"To the capital... Oh, don't distress yourself," said this new monarch soothingly, reaching from her ribboned perch to put a hand upon the dear girl's shoulder, "Those people are mad, you know. Loony to the gills." She made a face and wound her finger in a circle out in the air rather than close to her temple.

"But the Duchess said—"

"The Duchess! I hope you aren't in league with _her_," this with an airly laugh. "I won't say she's a rotter or anything; she has done terribly good work helping us out with this nasty business of ruling, it does so get in the way sometimes."

"I thought she usurped the Queen of Hearts, she suspectly claimed to succeed to the throne," said Alice. The Page reached up and pulled down another bar swing and handed Alice onto it. While they three rose slowly into the air, passing trapezes and others on the ribbons, the Queen said,

"Ursurpation is such a vowel-filled phrase," dismissively, as though she were thinking sweet fond thoughts of her sister, "It's just that we all need a good break from the stuff of thinking every now and again, that's all."

"Have you seen a map of the Wonderland?" asked the Page as they helped Alice step onto a tree branch high up. She folded over the hand warmer with the jar inside and tucked it under her arm.

"Er, I've seen a globe of it," she said, concentrating on not falling half a mile out of a tree.

"Right, so you know how it's all set up, the four states and the center, which is the capital. It's a bit of a 'fallow land' system. All the Courts rotate every few years or so; one leaves their permanent place to run things generally for a bit, that way all the Courts get an even go at it."

"But wouldn't that cause the citizens distress, constantly going back and forth under different rules?"

"On the contrary," said the Queen, "They quite like feeling all perked up like that, bit of soda and vinegar in the old teapot. The Duchess fell into place because we all wanted a holiday at the same time—it's awfully convenient, since that way we have far more time between our court duties."

"Where does the Duchess go when _she_ is on holiday?" The 'fallow fields' theory did dry up awfully quick when all five states had somebody in charge.

"Oh, I don't know," the Queen was waving over someone from a group of similarly black-haired people on bars nearby, "She hasn't gone on any that I know of. Hi there, come on!" A man with a very dashing waxed moustache and a jaunty top hat was making his way nearer them. He looked very much like a ringmaster: flat crop, tails, jodhpurs and riding boots drawing simple comparison. He seemed not inclined to remain aloft, but stepped out onto the treebranch with Alice.

"By Jove, an audience member!" he cried in the dramatist's drawl. The man clicked his heels together and bent half over to bow before uprighting again, nearly losing his hat.

"This is the King of Clubs, do come meet the Lady Mondegreen."

"She's out from Anglantine, Papa, can you believe it?" Alice looked up at the Page's words, realizing that the capital had a name with some surprise.

"Eh! With that whatsit, that blond woman, the Duchess?" He gave Alice the onceover once more. "You do look a bit like her, yars."

"I'm not related to the Duchess," said Alice, "I'm only trying to help her, something is eating creatures in the forest—"

"Are you sure _you_ aren't the Duchess?" he said, leaning in and looking at her out from underneath an upcurved eyebrow. The King suddenly leaned back and roared with laughter, twisting his brillantine moustache between two fingers. "That would be very strange indeed, my deah, very strange!"

"Is there any way to get back into Anglantine?" she asked in a weakening voice, hoping to get somewhere with all this.

"Oh, now dear, why would you want to go back there? From here, you can go on to someplace else. It is quite unseasonable traveling weather, but then, every bit of life is an adventure, isn't it." Alice was growing quite tired now, and did not want to think about it so very much.

"You are perfectly welcome here, we haven't had anybody to watch us in ever so long since that roundabout hit a bit of a cropper, it took the whole of our floor with it; roundabouts are ever so popular these days..."

Our heroine sighed and was well on the road to a kind of despair when the Page waved her hands in the air, saying, "No, no, you must come and help me, you could use a good distraction, I can tell."

Alice was not quite so sure that a _good distraction_ was the phrase she would use to describe the rest of her evening, but after a few drowsy turns of the wheel, her general anxieties were soothed, and they began to talk of this and that, Alice inquiring after the names of the other states.

"The other states? This one's called Farisides," said the Page, and hurled another knife. "Then there's Hinnothea, and Etlucindes, and the other one is Ottausots." She flipped another knife end over end, and it landed somewhere near Alice's ankle.

Alice mentioned the Hatter and the points upon which the Duchess had touched, and the Page let loose another dry _thunk_, this one sticking in a satisfactory way between the assistant's feet.

"An idle place, hmm." She threw the last knife and removed her blindfold before it went in near a rib or three. Alice looked up at it from where she had stopped spinning, and the Page came near to let her down. "Mummy, do you know any idle places around here?" The Queen was climbing up a ribbon past them, hand over hand, but paused for a moment to consider the question.

"An idyll place? I hear there's an excellent river where one might pass the time, but this time of year, it's likely to be rather idle itself."

"No, an _idle place_," said Alice. "Or a prison, or a place for the exiled."

"Hmm, the other states might have those, I can't remember if we do or not."

"How do I go about looking for those in the other states?"

"Oh, that would be tricky, seeing as we can't take you out there-we don't have jurisdiction to pass between states, and mind you, we haven't been down out of this court in—"

"Forever."

"For_ever_," repeated the Queen.

"How does one go about getting jurisdiction?"

"Oh," said the Queen now, sighing and twirling around, upside down, "You'd have to be part of a royal caravan, and those don't move in the winter."

"Is there any other way? Could I make a special request, or apply, or something?"

"What you need is someone with jurisdiction," she repeated.

"I need to find them."

"They aren't here."

"I know that," said Alice, piqued, "But I wish I could speak to them."

"Well, well," said the Page as the Queen shrugged and swung off in another direction, "In the meantime, let's have a bit of dinner and shove off to sleep, hey? I'm sure things will look nice and blue in the morning."

Alice thanked her and took their offer of a hammock for the night (blessedly one nearer the ground, though it was colder than the higher branches), wrapping her cloak about her and keeping her hands securely on the jar inside the warmer.

She had been asleep for some long time when she awoke and began to hear noises, but they were voices, and she did not pay heed until the tree she was in began to gently shake, and with it the hammock, but then the motion came in greater waves, as though someone had grabbed it and was shaking it with purpose and determination.

It was not until Alice opened her eyes really and truly that she realized someone with very large angry eyes was standing over her. It took her a moment to connect _stranger looming over Alice_ with _probably not supposed to go back to sleep_ before she blinked to adjust, and then she felt the scream start up somewhere near her center of gravity. These eyes had a peculiar set of heavy brows entilded above them, and a singular frown creating deep indentions between those. The dark hair had been jerked back into a severe little bun, and the great muscled arms rested, hammy fists akimbo, on a tank of a pelvis. Alice's shriek was justifiable, for anyone would reasonably begin to scream upon noticing someone hovering like an over-indulged vulture above their comfort-bedside (as uncomforting a bedside as this was), but this visitor's scowl in the morning darkness invited a particularly penetrating scream, not a girlish squeal or the stuff of a maid on a "dark and stormy night," but a musical upswing that ended flatly and abruptly, and for a reason.

_"WOULD YOU KNOCK IT OFF,_" came the bellowing voice, nasal and trumpeting and authoritative and bossy all at once. Alice was bolt up, perfectly and absolutely awake by now, stunned and strangely glad to see this person, someone who commanded armies and shrank her opponents brassly, wildly, raucously.

"_Your Majesty!_" she cried in genuine astonishment, for surely by now, reader, you have ascertained that the Queen of Hearts was the one standing over Alice.

"Yes, you blistering howl of a child, stop hollering and get up!"


	20. Chapter 20

It is important to realize that any lock can be picked with a big enough hammer.  
Sun System & Network Admin Manual

We who live in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of bitter moments.  
Oscar Wilde

* * *

Alice remembered well the words by which she had parted with the Queen of Hearts, and was currently trying her best not to go into spasms from the effort exerted in keeping her face still and brave. It had been easy enough to call her a fatuous old thing when the end of a corridor was in sight, but here stood the old girl, Amazonian and corpulent as ever, and she was reluctant to remind the Queen of that heady day with thoughtlessness. It was an awkward situation, with the woman making circular strides about her, giving her the onceover, twice over.

This cheater, the towering inferno, stopped at Alice's face and made a familiar expression, one accompanied by a folding of the hands upon the curve of her back—I say curve, for there was no small of the back, and certainly nothing small about this woman. It was an odd look, one difficult to make out at first since she was tilting her head so far that her ear might have been on her shoulder. That slow, materteral smile, the way her eyelashes suddenly appeared, a sweet, dainty expression on a very ill-tempered tyrant.

"You don't happen to know why I was summoned all the way out to the Court of Clubs in the middle of the night, do you?" Alice waited a moment to see if this was a rhetorical question, and the thought occurred to her that she and her head might be in for a rather inconvenient parting of the ways, but Hearts's expression remained lovely, frozen in probably insincere sympathy.

"Perhaps she thought I was asking for you when I said I wanted to talk to someone expert in crime and punishment, who had jurisdiction to pass between the different states."

"I am that person," said Hearts, and gestured around her as though there were no one else to be had.

"Well, begging your infinite pardon, but I wasn't _expecting_ Your Majesty when I said that-at least I wasn't directly asking for you—"

"Oh!" Hearts cried, letting her eyebrows and voice go high, twirling her sceptre easily between her fingers and tapping it against her palm, "You weren't asking directly for me. And yet," she gestured with her broad hands about them both again, "Here I am, woken up at an ungodly hour to see what my idiotic sister was on about, and I find you," her hand finishing the motion to land at Alice, sizing her up, "All corked up on Drink-Me, though I have to say, you _almost_ got it right this time."

Alice was not sure how best to respond to that, and let it go.

"Tell me," she demanded in her curt voice, "What has that little NITWIT told you?"

"Only that I might pass between the states if I go with a royal enclave, and they do not move through in the winter."

"BLOCKHEAD!" cried the Hearts, rolling the word back over her shoulder as though to send it on up to Clubs. Her hair had momentarily spiked with anger, and her collar nearly flew off in disarray. "She is a stupid girl, and always has been. You, on the other hand, are quite clever, I daresay, and shall behold my wisdom."

"Yes, Your Majesty," said Alice with some slight hesitation. The woman turned a wild look upon her, much as a mustang does to the little girl who fancies she might tame him some summer, and Alice, spurred on by memory, opened her mouth very wide and said, "YES, YOUR MA-JES-TY," as pronounced as anything.

This contented the overbearer enough, who replied—

"She is WRONG, wrong indeed, and I say this because I am excellent enough to have knowledge which proves me to be CORRECT, and in this I may be praised." Alice thought it strange how the Queen was posing until she understood what the phrase encouraged, and replied,

"Oh—yes—indeed, you may, Your Majesty, a very great—wisdom, indeed—"

"Of course, of course, for you see, one needs only a passport or a caravan to pass between the TERRITORIES, which is not the same as the states, and what she is thinking is that SHE needs PAPERS to pass between states in order to have JURISDICTION. And she has not, for she does not manage her kingdom well, and in this, she suffers a FOOL." This last word rang even in the muffling snow.

"I see," said Alice after a pause.

"Greatly, and to wit: what do you wish to know?"

"What is an idle place?"

"A place of idles, what a stupid question," and she again twirled her heart-shaped scepter in her hand, very proud of how clever she sounded. Alice tried again, very patiently.

"Where might a learned monarch such as yourself send someone to be punished?"

"Oh! That is easy, for there are prisons to vessle them, and well I should fill them up with anybody who dares intercede with my rule, questioner or interloper."

"How many are there?"

"Five, to be sure! Not nearly as many as should keep the number of traitors and thieves, and that is a truth. Gold, Black, Red, Silver, and White, all bearing my standard colors."

"To which prison might the Duchess send a... traitor?" If she had thought the massive gargoyle before her had foamed with a blood-red eye before, the Queen of Hearts stretched up to her full stature now and set the record straight indeed.

"THE DUCHESS," she thundered, and Alice fancied the trees moved their branches out of the way to avoid being blown off in the ensuing hurricane, "I do not like her very much," she said between her teeth, very changeable indeed, for this was with an almost diplomatic, though still rather torrential, tone of voice. "She has drawn us all out on a technicality."

"Yes, I had wondered of that myself—" began the young woman before her in a nearly excited voice.

"AND I WONDERED OF IT FIRST." The crown popped off the woman's hair and came back down, she was growing quite agitated speaking of the Duchess, but Alice dared not change the subject. Hearts's next pronouncement was in a flat, bored voice. "What do _you_ need to know of prisons, what need can you possibly have of them, you are a _child_."

"Perhaps not prisons, I am really thinking of someone being exiled."

"Who?" this demanded of her.

"The Mad Hatter, the Duchess sent him away for being a traitor."

"That sounds fair and just," said the Queen, nodding her juxtaposing approval.

"But she never said why, there wasn't even a trial—" Alice drew up short upon seeing the uplifted eyebrow, and tacked hard left. "I mean... the Duchess... she never—never, she—" and inspiration struck at this very point in the narrative, Alice drawing herself up and nodding indignantly, "_She... _pronounced... the verdict... before the sentence."

She had plucked blind an arrow deep into a cave, hoping it would rouse a sleeping monster to aid her, and in this, Alice soon considered herself a great success.

"Why, _that fiend_," shouted the Queen of Hearts in a hissing whisper, and clenched her fist to complete the tableau. "Well, we must get him back to try him the proper way and have an execution where I can manage it, I have no powers in these parts, hang it all—who did you say it was?"

"Er, the Mad Hatter, Your Majesty."

"Mad Hatter, Mad Hatter, I don't know any Hatters of Mad."

"Assuredly, you do, Your Majesty," said Alice, and made sure to curtsey very deep in great reverence, "You have punished him before for singing badly."

"Ah, yes," said the Queen of Hearts in fond reminiscence, "I have punished ever so many people, haven't I?" She was lost in the fond hazy memory of it all for a moment, and Alice began to shift about in the snow. "The Duchess is not the punishing type, certainly not as prolific or celebrated as I am," she continued low, and Alice looked up in some surprise, for her voice was quite altered, as though this is what she would sound like if she did not go about screaming at everything. "But driven to the proper ends..." The dark-haired woman inclined her head and frowned, actually managing to appear throughtful.

"The Antipodean Waste," she said suddenly. "The Tower there is quite remote; I do not think she would spend time and energy applying herself to the prisons, removed is her mind from the interests of the House of Cards."

"Antipodean Waste?" said Alice, hoping that it was not truly the antipode in a geographic sense.

"Yes, it would be perfect!" the Queen went on, purely thinking aloud, "There's none there, no one at all, what a miserable place, so cold and barren, even if you could bust out you couldn't get far." Alice leaned against a tree upon hearing this.

"What is the use of escaping, then?" she asked herself internally, and knew the answer, but would not think it.

"It is a three day's journey by chair, let us leave at once!" this sang out in exuberance, as though the Queen, in her newfound glee, would find the Hatter herself and declare _sentence first, verdict later_ before brandishing an axe.

"Leave where?" said an airy voice, and the Queen of Clubs sunk down nearby upon a rope.

"We are going to the Antipodes," announced Hearts before seeing who it was—and at this, she scowled heartily, for she did not like her sister, though her sister remained placid.

"That is a long way away," she remarked blandly.

"Indeed, it is a three day's—" the fat one wheeled on Alice fiercely. "TURN OUT YOUR POCKETS," she bellowed, and in her confusion, the poor girl stood staring. "NO POCKETS?" came the reply, "SHOW ME WHAT IS IN THAT HAND WARMER." Thinking the woman desired payment for the conveyance, Alice delved for the jar, and pulled it out, fumbling with it, saying,

"I have no money at all, Your Majesty, only this—"

"I don't want your money, child! If I am to be stuck inside a palanquin with only you for three days, a queen must be ENTERTAINED, and the sound of your voice _TIRES ME!_" Alice did not like the idea of spending three days anywhere with the Queen of Hearts, and on top of all this, it worried her very much to remember that she had left the Hatter's hat in his house back in the capital and she had promised to look after it. She felt very anxious now in addition to her alarm at the woman's threatened companionship.

"I'm... sorry," said Alice, "Perhaps Your Majesty would find her own voice more... diverting, but I must ask whether..." She trailed off in a distraction, for the Page had joined them in her amusement at the ruckus her aunt had caused, and all three royal women were staring at Alice quietly. She actually turned her head to see if there were something behind her, but there was not. The noise had all died from the copse, and the three faces stilled, the Queen of Clubs having actually reverted herself upright to look and see.

"What a beautiful thing," said the breathy young Page. Alice held up the jar to eye level; the blue flame casting bright and shadows upon them, shifting and oscillating.

"What is that?" asked Clubs in very nearly the same voice.

"Well, I—I—that is to say, I-" said Alice.

"Open it," said Hearts, her face distant, almost melancholy. "Let it out." She tried, but the top _would_ resist her now of all moments, and remained fast.

"I've never seen anything like that before," said Clubs as Hearts came near to Alice, but Alice held the jar close to herself, the changing light illuminating the woman's face. It did not alter colors, but moved in a swirl, like a gas—not thin or misty, rather like a fog or steam trail.

"I wish I had one," she heard the Page say to her mother. Hearts shifted her eyes down and slightly back, annoyed again now.

"You will come with me, but keep that thing out. I want to have a look at it." And off she marched, the girl trailing hesitantly, looking over her shoulder where family Clubs were waggling their fingers goodbye at her.

Alice was not allowed to return to Anglantine to retrieve the hat in its monumental importance after all; the Queen found it of the utmost expediency to surge forward—"For if we do not leave now, we will have missed three days from now, and any later is three days from then, and that is simply absurd"-hauling them both into a large sedan chair borne up by one of the green pig things she knew from the races, their party completed with the Ace of Hearts and two of the lower Clubs walking alongside, for, as the Queen of Hearts explained,

"She had misappropriated half her sister's court years ago, and anyway, she didn't think the silly twit had even noticed it, she was almost criminally bad at ruling over what little land she _had_ got," and from there launched into a detailed, rambling morass of a dissertation on why the Queen of Clubs deserved to have her court subsumed into that of the Hearts.

The three days passed in this fashion, Alice allowing the Queen ample to gush her thoughts about the saloon freely as she gazed out the window, grappling with morality and attempting to find believable excuses to give the man regarding his hat ere she found him. She had not been able to draw more out of it than what she had seen him hold in his hands, and this comforted her, it seeming a kind of failsafe, but it worried Alice deeply that the hat might be lost, or stolen, or worse—destroyed, while she was out performing illegal acts of breaking-and-releasing. The Queen had long since forgotten her quest to seek out the Hatter and give him an unfair trial, focusing in her less talkative moments upon the jar of light, which Alice made sure to keep close on her lap. The way the woman eyed it did not instill her with confidence, though the Queen did not scream quite so much, and never once mentioned the possibility of a good old fashioned _off with her head_ing—which was rather nice, of course, but she kept waiting for it, and it never came, so it was all very troubling and dissatisfying.

In the evenings the great beast would sink down, calling out in a long flat _hooonk_, and at last they two emerged, cracking their bones and stretching, Alice going for the nearest bit of land away from the Queen as quickly as her numb legs would allow. The earth became more as rocks and clay, webs of brown vegetation choking out an existence, the only thing being for miles the post tent bearing the Court of Hearts' heraldic standard whenever they stopped, and there was always one around. From this, she got the notion—but did not remark; it was enough to merely put this to memory and listen carefully to the soldiers' talk—that the Court of Hearts found it necessary to station men in remote locations, as though they were to build a fortress, or control these outlying lands.

Their final day in the litter brought the Winter Solstice, and the procession stopped just as the sun was loosing from its meridian. Alice peeled back the curtain, and the Queen suddenly came to her energies, herding her companion out of the box, saying how warm and drowsy she must be inside, how she must embrace the cold and buck up for the long walk, here, let me take your warmer, there's a good girl, now have a couple of circles around the chair now, and loosen your shoulders.

Alice trod out a few steps before turning to look at the Queen of Hearts where she stood before the entrance to the litter wearing a wide, affected smile. Her position blocked the way back inside where Alice's warmer lay on the red cushion, and Alice thought to herself,

"Well, it will be quite cold without it, but if she wants it, I shan't make her give it to me; I don't want to be yelled at," for it was quite obvious what the Queen was up to, but Alice did not mind it much given the circumstances.

"Ah," said the Queen brightly, "And here we must part—the Ace will walk with you a short ways yet to point out your direction—mind you take care on the rocks, dear girl," waggling a finger and betraying her secret joy, "Ta!"

Our clever heroine smiled and curtseyed before following the Ace; the Queen remained out of the slip, thinking herself very clever for not rushing back inside to search for the jar inside the warmer—but then she would be disappointed and exceedingly vexed to find it empty once the procession moved again, for Alice had taken great care and slipped it into her spare cloak pocket upon her ejection.

"There," said the Ace, and brought his arm level with his chin to gesture at a blackened form jutting out of the moors as the sun sought its last repose too early. Now she could see it; the bespoke-named Tower was precisely this and nothing more; no fortress with drawbridge and military guard, merely a dark stone column arising from the earth around it; not a soul about for ages and leagues, she thought.

Alice turned to the Ace, who looked honestly at her with this new journey now before her. He removed the black watchcoat from his person and shifted it about her shoulders.

"These are harsh lands, and I daresay you will need more than a mere cloak. It is not so thick with snow in these parts, but the cold is cruel indeed. Good luck," he said, for this was as far as he could stray, having to move quickly to catch up with the Queen by now, and left her alone to contemplate the visible end of her journey.

Alice watched until his head disappeared over the edge of the ridge, pulled up the hood of her cloak out of the tangle at her neck, and then turned full and began to walk.

Out, and out again through the forlorn thickets until she could see the moon, full and too-bright, the sky shaping dizzily above her in a concave dish, cold and distant, no welcome clouds to tamp down the notion that she was very much alone in so remote and frightening a place as this. Alice flexed her fingers and they burned painful, dumb to whatever reasons their mistress had for subjecting them to such harsh winds and a futile endeavor as this. Futile, no, never, she thought, and gathered folds of the huge coat into her hands to block out the sting. She stepped onto a boulder embedded deep within the earth, treading on the long-dead moss still clung there, careful lest she slip on its icy shell and strain and strand herself; then over the peak of land saw the Tower striking closer upward, making itself be known to the sky, and an imposing lonely structure it was. She kept moving forward, arms balanced out now, the worrying false heat at her fingertips forgotten, glancing up at the dark hulk so often that her chin began to ache.

And on, and on, and out, and out, she walked until the moon was so white it blanked out the stars as she stood before the Tower.

Its dark heather stone rounds found no greenery or sustaining accompaniment twined at its base to suggest that it belonged here; it was out of place and well in place at once. Alice approached the slick ice-glazed wall to view the turret, far up and away. If it had not been quite so cold, and quite so lonely, and quite so bare out here in the Antipodean Waste, the Tower might have suited the lonely inhabitant of a fairy tale, though she had no armor and certainly no—Alice dove her hands into the rumpled cloth of her skirt to find the hammer and its chain, nearly the length of her forearm now. She did have a kind of vorpal blade in form disguised, indeed, but what to strike? A rattling iron grate along the northern side, she perceived upon circling the evil thing, abutted not the stone, but barred a small alcove with a kind of illusion or trickery, the blocks being so dark as to cast the same image whether in light or in shadow. She lifted the hammer and smacked at the lock. It cracked as though made of old plaster, and the iron bent besides. Alice tucked the hammer back under her cloak, careful not to knock it against her by false moves.

Inside this alcove was a sickly oil flame rolling back and forth across the wick, licking out dying roars in the trapped windswirl. She found a small hunk of wax, and lit the stub. Now climbing the narrow stairs, the footholds barely sliced into the rock, too small for her, let alone a man's feet, Alice's imagination flickered and glowed to full in the dim light; it began to illuminate the way before her, distorting and twisting, calling up haunted speculations she had not put into order before the ascent, and they picked at her, pulling from the shadows. What if he were not here? What if hehad long set to ruin and perished, or if he languished even now in death's fog? She paused, foot raised, and stared down at the space where unknown figures might have dragged him unwilling, his heels catching in a final effort to resist—she closed her eyes and palmed the centerpost before exerting her efforts anew, moving faster until she found the heavy wooden panel at the top with iron braces at the hinge, not a door as you and I understand it, but like a small trap in the ceiling.

The light breathed with her, heaved shadows and began to splutter while she rested a hand against the wood, drew the latch, and pushed it; though it was small, it required her best effort, particularly as the candle roused in fits and made the thrills of anxiety and nerves near her middle rush up into her throat and die down before shooting anew into her ankles.

A circular tower would have a circular room heading its apex; Alice stood upright in the center of it, a thin rectangular window casting white light onto the floor. She lifted the candle and found the place to be empty, and then there was the jolting suck of someone taking an angry breath behind her, she fumbled to turn, the candle pinched out, and she was shoved back against the wall by the cutout window, the moonlight in her eyes, shaking frantically, for someone was indeed with her in this cell.

She was still, and heard them breathing.

"Who is there?" she cried, nearly at tears for fright, and hunched her shoulders against the stones in case they decided to rush her again. A bluish gray movement on the other side made her move out of the light to adjust her eyes, and then she was looking upon the Hatter again, he was there, standing shades in the shadow, a vague outline. Him, there, now, hair and eyes and nose and stature and all, once more, again. She stood against the wall for support, her heart beating so fast she thought perhaps she would pass to the floor before ever managing to set him free.

He was scrutinizing her, silent, and Alice came back into the light, only just a little.

"It's only me, I've come to get you out," she said soft, but he did not reply, instead turned; she heard his footsteps on the stairs, and followed.

If Alice had expected an exalted reunion with the Hatter, one of smiles, profuse thanks-be and perhaps even in a very little corner of her heart a grateful embrace, this was not that meeting. True, he was quite rich and welcome indeed to her eyes, and she was glad to be back within his presence, which cast not a shadow but a healthy, though eccentric and often frustrating, sunshine of companionship. He stood at the base of the Tower, and Alice made to offer the watchcoat, but then she looked up into his face.

The man cast his eye out over her head into the whitecast waste, still wearing his evening dress from the night of the ball, coatless, mouth open to breathe steam, winded from the stairs. He looked as though he had just come out of the villa, and Alice half-thought nothing had changed but this new reticence, until she saw that the shadows the moon palled over his face were no shadows at all-for his features were thrown into brilliant light-but in fact very dark circles beneath his eyes. Her heart fell to see the Hatter was in a poor state indeed, much altered from his sunny disposition, now thrust into a stuttering kind of bewildered despair.

He edged through her as though she were mere vapor, began to walk forward, and she watched him until she ran to catch up. The man paused, she with him, and he turned to sort of view her for the first time, though not really; he opened his mouth and gasped air, looking all around, searching for some sign.

"Where are we?" his voice came out flat and low, staccato, void of positive feeling.

"Antipodean Wastes," she offered, and watched him cringe deep and make a strange sound before finally-

"_GOD_," in a burst of rage; the Hatter was very fierce now, and miserable at this bad fortune, clenching his fists and turning heel in all four directions. "We have to get out of here," and wrenched her hand in dragging her forward before she jerked away her hand to draw the overcoat from her shoulders. He seized that from her too, and practically rent it in his efforts, at last getting it about him, but instead of bolting forward in anger as she expected, he snicked the collar high around his ears, and sunk back shaking into a bit of high ground. She meant her hand upon him to be soothing, but Alice nearly flung herself back over for surprise when he snatched at her wrist, trying to pull her down into him too abruptly. Alice listened to him breathing and calmed herself.

"You are not so cold," she told him by and by, rubbing briskly at his arms, "Your hands are very warm, I can feel them through your gloves."

"No, no." How stark his voice, how far from the operatic performances of summer.

"It is not so bad as that, I am sure," said Alice in a small voice, but uncertain. She had gotten him out of there, yes, but—but now this. And what? Eyes pinched shut, lines appearing in the purpling of his flesh, the Hatter shook his head. Alice extricated herself, rose, and coaxed him back over near his most recent prison, at the very least intending to block the stronger winds, but there was no going inside the moaning entrance, and certainly not upstairs.

"Sit over here," she urged him, plucking at his hands, "For just a little while."

"We have to keep going," she heard him say in the whip of air, "I shall lose myself, surely; you will have to drag me out, I will die—"

"_Stop it_," she snapped at him finally. "Sit down, you're going to pass out if you don't rest." They were silenced by the winds, and he glared at her, but it was weak, and she felt nothing from it.

She drifted to the sick earth, scraping along the brick wall and winding up half sitting in what had been a strand of grass but was now packed and spent dirt, with nothing but a few limping weeds choking through the crevasses in the clay. Care whisked from her into the breeze, exhaustion rushed in to greet her, smiling nastily, and it was with a horrible inflated feeling in the joints of her knees that she finally let the vague clouding at the back of her mind rush forward and pinch at the back of her retinas, pulsing in waves_. _She leaned back, to be floated up by a threadbare absence of panic, and swallowed.

The Hatter dropped down next to her heavily with an exhalation that was more from having the wind knocked gently out of him than a sigh, and he looked out across the land in a continuous search for something, anything or anyone. Finally, and with no small amount of caution, he leaned back against the stone next to her. They sat for a moment, still and tenuous. And then he sort of slumped over in finality, and lay his temple across her collarbone and looked so dazed, as though the worry weren't even something that he had to invoke or think about, it just was and it would be.

She could not help but gather him up, put her arms around him and gather up the pieces of him, and he put his arms around her middle and they held each other together like that, barely holding onto the pieces, waiting.


	21. Chapter 21

From the hallway into your room  
I can see you before the moon  
Understand me my blue eyed son  
I do not wish to see you gone  
Look away if you don't like the sound  
I could not share what I have found  
"Blue Eyed Son," Birdie

* * *

Alice stood against the cold stone wall where it turned to obscure view and sobbed in a passion, trying as best she could through this wicked fit to hold in the ugly sound, but as it was, the wind was pulling up at her coat, insisting upon itself so, so that she could hardly be heard over it anyway. Regardless, the shame was a tricky fog, a miasma around her middle to mix with her self-pity, clouding better judgment, her heart of hearts which knew that this was a very silly thing to do given the circumstances, and she turned her face into it, covering her mouth and hoping it would just leave.

But it didn't, and she made a sound as though she were laughing—_ah ha ha ha ha ha_—tears flowing out of her to leave angry red tracks that would only stain raw her cheeks. As intelligent as she was, Alice was a relatively new soul to grief, and her situation at the moment felt like a slap across her mouth, smarting where it shouldn't have.

Friendships end; sometimes their dissolution is inescapable. Whether they fade or die, whether they are murdered by the invisible hand of fate or from the caustic shock of a social faux pas, all things come to an end, and even the most celebrated union of minds and excited, near-constant meetings and conversations devolve by months and then years of nothing, and nothing. Perhaps some people can pick up the threads again in a cosmic game of Cat's Cradle and go easily along as though nothing has changed, no time has passed. But sometimes friendships fall apart.

A bloody, raging endfight lets one knows where one stands—ardent points recalled, the pride of battle scars-and there is a thin line between love and hate marked by fervent passion. But a passive retreat with no explanation or signs of decay is worrisome. We look up one day and find that our friend is nowhere near us, and we ask ourselves why they would stop talking to us in a very quiet and subtle sort of way. Do their excuses, if we ever see them again, ring true or crack with flat falsity? Perhaps we are to blame for owning some fatal flaw they have tolerated til now but can no longer weigh comfortably against the benefits of our character. They simply drift away, slipping off into unparted crowds of people while we watch with no words that would recall them to us. Anyone can find him or herself trapped in a peculiar eddy, the dying friendship with no real event horizon, one circling the drain but never quite exiting the ride.

Older people and liars might tell us not to lay blame for disappearance, or warn against developing a toxicity by desperate need to understand where it went wrong—_sometimes people just move on, dear_. But that innate need to understand creates a conviction that this friend would tear out her own fingernails to escape, we must be so vile, searching our personality for the weeping pustules, and knowing perfectly well that it's immature to be so melodramatic and feeling ashamed to lose tears over something this trivial—it is then that we age a bit, and sour, and begin to fully resent people for making us feel feelings from which they are removed or perhaps blissfully unaware, and resent ourselves for feeling guilty for resenting them.

Alice was removed from being then herself, because in truth these were heady days, fueled by a valve she could not check, one that frequently surged of its own impetus, let the dial pop and crack, the needle blurring, sometimes filling her up so fast she nearly burst, sometimes leaving her so alone that she could barely hear herself existing. And as though to demonstrate it, she suddenly stopped crying and thought to herself again how foolish she was, how absolutely mindless and humiliating to be crying like this, _How can you be so dispassionate when I have trusted and confided in you; maybe it would be better if I hid from you every time I saw you just to make you feel the way that I do._

She was unfolding her pocket handkerchief when out he came from an archway, very sudden-like, striding across the stone walk with a strange, listless purpose, which altered course when he spotted her.

"Oh," he said, and almost rocked back on his foot. "Hullo." There were probably ten steps between them, and neither moved closer. "Why are you crying?" She thumbed the monogram on the cloth.

"I don't know," Alice replied in a low voice, and felt like crying again, her tear ducts pinching together as if they could draw up the water from her bones. Her forehead was aching, and she said, "How have you been?" by way of changing the subject in a half-wistful, half-bitter sort of voice. He looked down at the toes of his shoes.

"Ah, busy... very busy, with—with lecture." And he halfway winced, as though he knew a poor answer, and it was. She had seen him from across the quad through the gate several times since that summer, carrying his equipment up to the roof near Old Tom, photographing it from angles this way and that, hovering and then shifting back and forth over the still box. Alice ground the ball of her foot into the grass, knowing what she wanted to say but feeling frustrated and overheated and embarrassed that he had to look at her now. If she did say it, it would hardly come out for the rippling cracks and fissures in her voice.

"You are much missed," she said, but couldn't get past that, and settled for watching a steamy cloud above the treeline. She wasn't quite sure if she missed him, or missed the memory of what he had been before. "It has been very strange without you." He sighed, hesitated, and shifted the strap on his arm.

"The world is a strange place; I'm not the only decision-maker." He was not looking at her but up, north, as though he could see into the town through the walls. "I didn't create this world, unfortunately, or the outcome would be a bit different, perhaps."

"I don't know why you don't come around for us anymore. We practically spent the whole summer in the college, dull and stupid. We had so much fun with you, and now everyone is talking about Seasons and... " Alice sighed. "Are we boring now? If we are, it was an accident, we never meant it." He worried over his lip, moving it slightly, thinking with eyes wide and distant.

"Of course it isn't your fault," he said in a bland voice, but she did not believe that she believed him, for she had heard her mother talking in a voice that whispered of wrongdoing and spoke of new education and the future. "Sometimes people separate and move forward with their lives. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, even if it breaks us all apart." Alice looked up at him, hearing her governess tramping to call to her over the lawn, watched him glance up and react, "I would hope that you do not forget me; you and I were excellent friends, weren't we. I never was so inspired before." He was beginning to step back, in motion even as she took a deep breath.

"Goodbye, Reverend," and she felt the brief flashing hope that she would never see him again, if only to feel the spite and smother herself in it.

"Afternoon," and then he was striding off again while the governess pulled up short to gaze off after him for a mile-long second. Alice put the handkerchief into her pocket, felt the long loop of string with its ends tied together, and wondered what she could do with it now.

She was moving softly in the dark hall toward the exact spot where there was just a bit less blackness, twiddling with her cuffs, trying to pull them down as far as she could and squeezing her hands into fists, the early coal grey barely reaching in under the closed door nearby, which she did not touch. There was no real purpose in idling here, nothing she could do now in the early morning hours or really ever, save trying to pull everything just a bit closer, but despite the non-routine associated with _that room_, she paused for just a moment to tug at her cloak and throw a passing glance over her shoulder, then felt the stairs and the door and went out into the field and the thick wooly _scuntch scuntch _of her boots and snow.

Almost immediately her elbows of their own accord went rigid against her ribs, and she squeezed her fists again as hard as she could before giving up and stuffing them tucked under her arms before she'd even reached the slate fence. It wasn't that she didn't enjoy the long walk for the cold, as it was bitterly enough that puffs of steam sprang up in her wake; what made her shrug her shoulders and press her chin into her collarbone was the early morning darkness.

Hours later, when she would be nearly done and the sun would rise high enough, it would be hazy and everywhere and she could never quite tell where it sat in the sky, piercing somewhere far above her its distant silver light, cold and disaffected. Here and now, Dawn couldn't be bothered to cast down onto the girl more than a laconic eye, the ugly orange slash on the horizon; there was no striking sunrise stretching and tuning its beams out here. Deep purpling grey clouds set to push back the light until it was nearly a sad enough affair to simply call it a day and want to spend the rest of it in bed.

But she couldn't, and the new night's snowfall made the great wooden door a scraping, tugging strain, and she could hear them inside, shifting and waking and glistening their eyes in the lamplight she had pooled out of nothing, and panting she sat down, pressing her forehead into the great flank, and thought with her hands and not with her head.

In a way it was like being an insomniac.

She had had nights before with some un-understood premonition of what was to come, knowing somewhere in the back of her mind that _this would be a night like that_, that she would climb into bed and close her eyes and feel comfortable and secure and would simply wait as the night went past, helpless and seething at whatever about it was offbalance. The strange globular feeling of being tired and worn did not dissipate in these times as it had in the past, even though she did sleep.

Alice never really knew what sort of expression her face fell into whenever she turned her head like that to look into the room she passed every morning—this morning in particular. Whether it was one of nostalgia or veiled resentment, perhaps an occlusion was for the better, for the better that nobody knew, and Alice did not know herself.

Even if Alice had had a mirror to look into, she would not have done it, for she was tight and pale with the melancholia that she had borne upon her back across the Waste and the Outer Territories. It wasted no time in attaching itself, not unlike a ball of thorns bumbling along behind the two of them, excited by the possibility threaded between the looser curls coming out of her wilted bun. It overshot the next bounce and thatched itself between her shoulder blades, clawed and snagged to the wool, and there it stayed. She cried with frequency, but not without good reason, giving her a prolonged sense of malaise and a deadness in the bridge of her nose. Her fringe grew long that winter, hastily swept back with everything else, with all the work and the mass of the rest of her hair, but Alice did not see a mirror for a long time, and remained unaware of this development.

They had blown over the moors with their coats pulling always at them, making them feel heavy and early exhausted. For Alice this was compounded by the Hatter careening numbly between dragging her forward with a too-sharp energy that seemed played out as soon as it began, and lagging on her, nearly leaning her backwards. For weeks afterward she would feel a vague chafing at her ankles from the wind in her skirts, and his phantom hand ringing her wrist. Alice did not bivouac beneath crags and drink from pools of gathered raindrops in the bowl of a rock as lost heroines do. Instead at moonset, still in the black of morning, there stood a sagging barn with the first layers of wood peeling off the boards, and the Hatter collapsed in the hayloft onto his back, gone before the dry airborne strands settled back over him, dis-engaged from the world in this strange condition that was more a forceful and voracious state of unconsciousness than sleep.

Alice dozed with her temple against the wood when she was not worrying over the intense and painful pressure curling in riptide waves out of her stomach from the hunger pangs. It is a difficult thing to be hungry, and even worse to be concerned about the future on top of that, but of far, far greater concern to have another being within the sphere of responsibility. He did not wake, he did not stir, he did not move, he did not twitch his fingers and toes. The Hatter simply lay in the corner where he had shut down and there he stayed until Alice woke in the late afternoon and remembered.

She shuffled and creased her way into the corner where his trajectory had deposited him and waved away tendrils of stale hay, looking into the Hatter's etiolated face and the deep quiet lines beneath his eyes. Still in the off switch; she could barely tell if he were breathing, and put her hand close to his parted mouth to tell. He jerked to life only to turn the blank expression in another direction without opening his eyes, and so Alice had it in mind to see if there was any promise of something to eat. She rose, growing stiff and impatient, and promptly found a small herd of Normande cows living beneath the hay loft—which alarmed her, not because they were there, but because her first thought was that finding their feed and picking through it actually sounded like a promising sort of idea.

Barring this, however, Alice decided that the best thing was to see if there was a farmhouse paired with the barn. She was soon trembling, weak, with her foot on the last rung of the ladder and making her way out of the barn and into a fresh casting of snow up past the tops of her boots. She blinked, and she was standing at the door, wobbling slightly.

"Oh, hello, HELLO!" cried voices within, and the young lady suddenly remembered that she was on the lam with an escaped convict whom she herself had sprung loose, which probably meant that she was in an awfully good volume of trouble herself, and stood in the snow getting soaked and red-raw for a decent minute and a half before recognizing that a man and a woman were ushering her inside with the greatest of relief on their handsome features.

Fortunately or unfortunately for her, the high-borne people living in this house fancied themselves on some adventurous holiday acting as a farmer and his wife, mistook Alice's sad, half-lidded expression and the habit she had developed of tilting her head slightly to the right out of exhaustion and physical ache for one of great nobility and nuanced experience in the world, and wrongly assumed her to be an aristocrat playing the same grand game of dress-up as they. It did not take much in the way of logic for Alice to reach this conclusion, that they were aping at rustic life and were quite glad to have someone about, for they made her stand dripping at the matting, watching the both of them while they talked at her for a good quarter hour.

They were basically useless, for neither of them had any idea how to do anything of any importance besides dressing and posturing in imitations of what they believed farmers and farmer's wives to be like and do, the man draping himself in manly fashion upon the mantle to gaze self-importantly into a crackly fire and the woman simply holding a ball of yarn in her hands, turning it over and again as though this would conjure her up a magic pair of mittens. Toward the end of all this the remark went round that Alice would be a fine girl indeed as the wife had been of the past Season _enciente_ and needed a hand or two about the place.

"Well," said Alice in what was really polite effete declination but tended toward sounding neighborly and officious, "I can't say I've ever worked a farm, exactly—"

"Bit of a dismal landscape, I must say the society isn't much, but we've got enough food, and we'll give you an honorarium, a token, as one does," said the farmer, and waved his hand lightly, laughing. Alice shut her open mouth with a click at this intriguing statement, and her raised eyebrows seemed to give it all the air of a done conclusion; the farmer's wife clapped her hands in glee, skipping toward the steamer trunk in the corner and mining out hardy rough togs and kerchiefs and chattering away about the snug little _château_ at the top of the combe.

Alice received the threaded folds and a slab of rye into her arms somewhat unwittingly and ultimately with a bit of trepidation, and thus began her season of gallimaufries.

She had finished now, and leaned back on the stool. It was still quiet and warm in the barn, and this combined with the last pail meant she had a moment to sit, and this meant that her thoughts came out, and this gave her pause to suddenly slump forward in complete silence for a moment, pressing her cheeks and mouth very hard into her open hands.

"You're spoiling the milk doing that," said a voice overhead which Alice had not heard before, and she sat up from where her forehead was pressed into the cow's flank to look all around her before she saw the cat sitting atop the bovine's rump. It was a dark barncat, no relative to the Cheshire, and it flicked its tail, stared unblinking with neat little paws. Alice stared down into the contents of the pail and felt another teardrop roll into it from the end of her nose.

"I'm sorry," Alice said in a bleak voice that barely registered. She pressed the back of her hand to her chin, her apron ever stained now with dark spots from the tears, wincing at a fresh pinch.

"Why are you doing that?" it continued.

"What?"

"That, why are you doing that?"

"Oh, hush, you!" The cow at Alice's knees had turned her nose back to them, and chewing in circles around her cud, gave the cat a _look_. "She's sad, and she can be sad, too," this with a self-important snuffle, nose firmly into the air. The cat tracked its own smooth glance back to the milkmaid.

"Why are you sad?" it demanded without sympathy.

"I have a friend who is ill," she replied.

"The sleeping one, with the hair?" cried another bovinus voice nearby, terribly excited. The old girl jerked up her head again and cried in a most exasperated outburst,

"_Eavesdropping!_" to which the interloper responded in stuttering murmurs and gentle outrage that such juicy gossip would be denied them all in their time of need. The Bessie continued in a shrill voice, "Good _Lord_, if you're going to listen, be discreet about it!"

"What's wrong with him?" the cat asked her.

"I don't know," said Alice, not moving. "Everything."

"You're angry with him," said the cat astutely, gaining interest. The cows were silent, and Alice could hear tails flipping over on themselves. "We never see him, what does he do all day?"

"Nothing," said Alice. "Absolutely nothing." She withdrew from her cloak and set on the hay all the silly little trinkets the farmer's wife had given her, and said, "This is everything I have in the entire world. I could live right here in the hayloft and it wouldn't be any different." The cat stayed where it was, peering carefully, and Alice sighed.

What had he done in the time that she was milking and chopping wood and committing herself to the dairy rigors the farmer's wife found entertaining and delightful? Where was he while her hands were cold, raw, and creased, her mouth small, her heart too cautious to beat very hard in this weather? She found all the evidence every evening when she came back, pots and pans stacked across the furniture and the floor, strung up in front of the door like a rope of alarm bells. Lugging a pail with her arms gone dead she managed to destring herself from a casserole dish lid and three ramequins without slopping the buttermilk. Alice stood up straight to watch him edge down the stairs at the awful sound, only to be caught tight at it being merely her before rotating coldly and climbing the stairs for bed again. The girl went for the pail handle but couldn't lift; inside was her boot and the leg attached to it, not quite covered in the entire day's take, what she'd been paid in, ruined and leaving her with early washing on top of that.

She even found him once sitting inside the wardrobe, another time in the empty bathtub having dragged the ticking mattress off the bed and fitted it over the top like a cave, hiding, always with this hiding, which she would have preferred over the furniture ordeal once that began. She thought she was lucky when he stuffed the kitchen table and the shredded parlor rug up the chimney flue, glad and sickened to see that the motheaten gold velvet sofa in the attic sewing room was still there for her long, strange nights. She hauled firewood on a wire across the dell only to find it gone missing, spent in the pursuit of a hot bath by someone who lay for hours across a moldering four poster with the tree of life across the headboard, sleeping or not, she never knew. On that day she had stood in the kitchen below in a white hot panic before saying to the ceiling,

"_What is wrong with you?_"

She repeated the question later, louder, standing at the door of the upstairs bedroom while he stood at the window looking out. Alice had returned from the second of the day's milkings to find the entire house bolted against her, and stood shouting at the window in the snow for an hour, practically weeping in rage and frustration when the lock finally broke at her repeated kicks.

"You shouldn't even be here," he told the window.

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"It means you shouldn't be here." She threw her hands up weakly and let them slap against her dress.

"Perhaps I'd better go, then."

"Perhaps you better had." He said this in the most curious tone of voice, but Alice went completely numb between her wrists and her ankles in shock.

"I don't regret what I did," she said viciously, "But you are pressing me, and far too hard, and I have my breaking points." He did not answer, and she turned and slammed the door so hard the glass trembled in the lead.

Alice looked down into the bucket of buttermilk, but couldn't find where her tears had been subsumed into the mixture.

"I wonder if it isn't worth salvaging at this point," said Alice. "I suppose... I suppose I'm a frightful mess," she whispered on, and the cow replied in a soothing voice, but the girl was beginning to fall asleep on the milking stool and put her hand into her dress pocket for her handkerchief, instead finding the yarn the farmer's wife had given her the day before after churning butter.

"But you're a good girl," the cow was saying, "It's nice to have someone look after us the way you do."

She held the yarn at both ends between her fingers before bringing the tips together and slowly tying a knot to make a large loop. Alice held it out between her hands and cast back to her memories with the Reverend. She slowly wound it once around her palms, fearing she'd forgotten how, and then strung the ends with her fingers for the Diamonds, and then Alice wondered what she would do with it now.


	22. Chapter 22

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of the fool is in the house of mirth.

Ecclesiastes 7:4

* * *

Alice stayed in the hayloft, and days passed in methodical succession, as they are wont to do. However, there were three in particular, right up at the end, that counted more than the others. On the first of these, the cows had been well pleased to see so much of her, and amused, even flattered, at her putting up among them.

"Do you know anything about the Idle Place?" Alice was sitting on a hay ottoman, pulling chunks of cheese off a wheel the size of her hand. The cow closest to her talked over her cud, a bit of chaff poking out from her lip. This one was her favorite, the eldest of the herd and least silly in the head, given though she was to trills of exasperation at the antics of her younger cohorts.

"Idle Place?"

"That tower out past the valleys, in the scrublands."

"Oof, it's been ages since I've left the Outers, I can't even remember where I used to graze as a heifer."

"I wouldn't ask anybody else about it," said Alice quietly, and squished more cheese down onto the buttered slab of bread she'd brought in her kerchief. The Bessie sighed and chewed a few more rounds before answering.

"You've got them mixed up; the Tower is the stack of stones, but the Idle Place is where people go when they're inside." Alice thought on it in brief, and decided that she liked very much the fact that a cow knew things like this.

"The room at the top?"

"What, you've been in there? No, it's the _place_ you _go to_, a… what-d'you-call-it, _state of mind_. That Tower has effects on people," and she nodded seriously.

"It makes them depressed, you mean?"

"Mmm…" the cow thought a bit. "It has something to do with the Tower's placement, the way or where it's set, perhaps." Alice clasped her hands together for warmth and leaned over into her own knees.

"And what does it do?"

"Keeps you in a miserable way, for sure." The cow stopped chewing for a moment. "I think… it's like it stops time, but just on you. You sit there, and it all passes around you, and you know it's there, but it never hits you, never catches you along. No need to sleep or eat—no one's ever starved to death in that thing, that's not the point."

"That's an unusual punishment."

"Ta, only thing to do is think about what you've done." She paused, only to begin somewhat experimentally. "Is that where your friend was?"

"Mmm," was her distant reply.

"Well, I suppose the upshot is that he won't need a shave after all that," and then when Alice turned to look at her, "Sorry."

"No," said Alice, circling back her shoulders and sitting upright. "I'm only trying to figure it all out."

"You going to help him?" Alice was silent at this. "Every little helps; he could probably use it, even if he is a tupping mess." There was a fleeting sheer of a smile on the girl for just a moment, and she brushed friend cow's snuffy nose with a whippy bit of straw.

"How do you know all this, anyway?"

The cow did not turn to face Alice, but rolled her eye to match their gaze, somewhat sardonically.

"I am _very perceptive_," was her amused, haughty reply. "I pay attention to all the right things, you see."

"You're an eavesdropper, is what you are." Alice scooped all the crumbs into her palm, then held it out for the old girl's thick grey tongue to slather. This was a mildly disgusting but mostly fascinating affair, shiny and purplish like a great whomp of taffy curling round her hand. The cow smacked her lips together and licked the end of her nose in affirmation.

"Be a love and scratch my left ear, would you?"

With the second day appeared the small glass bottle pressed into her hand by the farmer's wife. This did not on its face seem to be a portent, namely because she was used to such bootless knick-knackery. In addition to the loop of yarn, she had managed to collect a pair of sheep shears, a small lady's monocle with a crack at the diameter, a postage stamp of a wooden spoon, and a small tin with a smidgen of wax in the corner. These were in addition to the slab of rye and three hams from before. But the bottle—that was where general trouble could be sourced, even if Alice would never trace it back. Truly, she did not even notice that it had been a mistake until well after she was mired in certain circumstances and couldn't be helped, but then, it was mud on mud anymore anyway.

She had been rubbing circles into the kitchen windows with a cloth when the woman had come up from behind and put her hand upon the girl's shoulder.

"Do you know what I think?" Alice jumped slightly, but turned politely. "I daresay you're one of those girls who suffers in winter," the woman remarked with a sigh and a strange glance to the ceiling, as though that could mask the prying, needling look that had shimmered into her eyes by firelight.

"I tolerate it as everyone else does, and do my best," replied the girl diplomatically.

"Hmm," she said with melody, and tilted her head to the side to assess young Alice, who hesitated, unsure whether to go back to work. "You've got such a strange expression when you're thinking. And you're a bit red in the eyelid, as though you cry yourself a solace every evening." She was not unkind, but apparently feeling expansive and poetic for some reason. Alice did not comment, and she went on. "A girl as pretty as you ought to be the sort who always has a smile about her, a simply natural upturn of the mouth, pleasing to her beaux." Her cheeks sunk into an overindulgent smile, a bit too cushy and relaxed. "It won't last forever, do make hay of it. Perhaps you've been kept out of society for too long and need the attentions of admirers—tucked away out of sight here in the countryside." She gave a mournful cluck and shook her head.

"I assure you—" Before Alice could finish the thought, the woman gasped melodramatically, and leaned in toward the poor girl, looking positively giddy for standing on the precipice of meddlesome potstirring.

"You aren't _heartsick_, are you? Run away from some devastatingly romantical problem? You appeared so mysteriously, like a foundling, and surely you have an epic array of secrets ripe for the ferreting." And she waggled her finger in Alice's face, giggling.

"No, indeed," said Alice, a bit awkwardly, "If I am making faces it is only because I've had a toothache of late." And she moved her lips in something of a pained smile.

"Oh," said the farmer's wife with a _tsk_ of her tongue, thoroughly vexed. "Well, well, at the very least I have something for it." And she had returned with a small dark bottle that had OFFICINAL DRINK-ME lettered on it in colorful illuminated script. "Now, don't rush this, it's quite potent, in fact—" she had held it out to pass it into Alice's hand, but suddenly drew it in close and scrutinized the blonde before her. "In fact, a smaller bottle will be much better," she said, and disappeared for a decent half hour before parting with a small phial of dark tincture.

Alice had few doubts that the farmer's wife was slightly dotty, and her sweet demeanor was the only thing that saved her from being right-out batty.

"Ah!" said she upon returning for the fourth time to the cheery hot sitting room where Alice now sat. "What a calm afternoon; I think we'll be having an early spring soon enough, don't you?"

Alice kept her gaze out the window to the yard. On this the third day she had been recruited—or rather, granted a reprieve from butter churning, which the wife had finally bored of—to dust the furniture a bit. She had oiled the topside of the writing desk with a rag, but now it was quiet, and the warm glow and melted ash in the air were soporific.

"Perhaps," she replied, not bothering with turning the feather duster over in her hands as some pretense. The woman ambled up to the hearth, aimed her forehead into the mantel with a languid, wavy motion, and began to poke and tap at the bright red logs which hummed and breathed in a strange hissing roar, the flames going up so high that the tips disappeared. And then, just as she had entered, the farmer's wife disappeared down the hall, weaving in an easy girlish way, and Alice rose after half a minute to approach the window.

The sky met the yard in a seamless graft today, one long drift of nothing that hovered over her, but was miles and years off in the distance at the very same time. It sat in the tree by the house, dense and near, and it slid low in pockets, setting the horizon artificially close, obscuring her gauge of distance. It moved in ways she could not see, its vanguard a fog that was not fog but an optical illusion, this presence of something, perhaps watching her, waiting.

Alice did not think there would be an early spring.

She raised the sash and leaned out to the vacuum, the mass of still cold against her cheeks and neck. It had stopped snowing sometime earlier, and the world was here so quiet that Alice only remembered now how silent it _was _in filled herself all the way up with the shock before releasing a thick cloudburst that rolled and dropped off invisibly to join the white. She could feel her heartbeat lob itself against her goosefleshed arms; the sensation was fresh and dangerous, and when she couldn't feel the end of her nose she stood upright and shuttered the window, sucking in now the hot dry thickness of the fire. Alice did not draw the drapes but instead went back to sit at the writing desk, still looking out.

She was thinking very hard of an idea that approached her, careful to make its conclusion known but also to remain shadowed from close scrutiny. And so to draw it out, Alice began to rifle through the desk drawers. There was a ball of twine, creamy vellum stationery, a clogged fountain pen, and at the very back, stuffed at where the tray met the joists, a stack of fading postcards bound up in a plain bit of ribbon.

With the mildest of glances to the hall door, Alice held the one at the top of the stack to the light, just at the edge of the desk. MIRACULOUS HOT SPRINGS, it read, _Reclaim health youth and beauty_ under that, and pictured was a young woman in a flowing white gown dipping her pitcher into a steaming pool of pure blue water. She flipped it to glance at the back, and found a penciled missive.

_Dear P_, it began. _You must come up and visit me sometime. Society really is dull without an abettor about. I tried the water; they say it has restorative properties, which made me think of __you__. I wonder if they mean it. I rather like the stuff—may have to bring some back! Everything's going smoothly._ The handwriting was charming, giving her a small glow of old happiness to see its uniform loops, but the signature appeared to be a jumbled-up pair of characters she couldn't quite untangle.

_P—_ said the next one, _I can't imagine how anybody gets any work done around here; everything and everyone is so… attractive. It amuses me how overjoyed all these people are to sit about and do nothing. Can you see the ringstain over my words? It's from the iced wine they serve in the salons._ _Do come up, I insist._ And sitting at the bottom the set of twisted symbols there, again incoherent. This had pictures of marble white buildings in close quarters, beautiful cobblestone streets beneath a cloudless blue sky. She restacked the deck and went on.

The next had a painted vista of a far-flung square, and in its remotest corner a set of pure white steps towered aloft to a stone palace. _Are you jealous yet, P? I went to the Opera last night and the audience gave a quarter hour's standing ovation to the lead soprano's maid, of all people. Priorities! I don't know how you can live with yourself when I'm having so much fun—do you?_ _I'm getting vastly impatient with this self-pitying act, what more do you want? An afternoon at the Courts? Be assured I can arrange for it._ This time the signature was hasty, scribbled.

And then the last, which was the most faded of all—she thought perhaps the illustration was of a badminton match. _Oh, P, you're an unmitigated ass, do you know that? Your last telegram was completely uncalled for, you loused ingrate—maybe I don't want you here if you don't stop sulking like this! Anyway, sending you a ticket by express post and there's a room in your name at the Grand Palais, you absolutely must dine with me when you get in._

"Did you find something in there?"

For the first time, the farmer's wife was standing in the doorway looking at her with an expression denoting clarity, her head cocked to the side, quietly assessing with pursed lips Alice, who sat still.

"Some old postcards."

"Oh?" She lifted herself off the jamb and drew near. "What of?" Alice handed them over, and the wife only glanced at the tops before returning them. "Must've belonged to another tenant before us." On Alice's blank look, she said, "People come and go in and out of this place so frequently, half the time they leave their clothes in the cupboards," and smiled loosely, but in a genuine way. "Something on your mind?"

"I think I better had go and check on the cottage," Alice said slowly, the idea coming to fruition. The farmer's wife looked out the window, where the sky was darkening before sunset.

"Well," she said. "Everybody needs a project. Do be careful out there. Only I wish you would take along a few things, for my comfort."

"And… the cows?" The wife waved her hand airily.

"Everything always works out in the end. And take these cards with you; they're so picturesque."

It began to snow again just as she came in view of the halfway point, a clouded hill; thankfully the stuff only thickened in earnest when she reached out to lean against the northern corner of the little wood frame. There was the heavier door, and the bit of roof jutting out—it didn't cover the ground with these winds, but it was there. She meant to stand under it for a moment, only to find a decent quantity of firewood underneath a bleached tarpaulin, blanked by the striating drifts. It was still there, there was still enough. Alice stood there under this revelation, undulating slightly in the wind and snow up to her shins, then hitched up the haversack and tried the latch.

Inside, the air was… oddly squidgy, if air could be so, and she actually reached up to wave her hand before her face for the distinct fog filling the room. It wasn't terribly thick, or even approaching total obscurity, for she could see clear to the window above the table. It certainly wasn't smoke, for although she was out of the wind the chill remained, and the air didn't quite choke. She was not in certainty of a distress until Alice shut the door and set down the pack, and then she could hear it. A small voice; vague and dry murmuring punctuated only by its trailing off into a near-whisper every now and again.

"The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is certainly co-extensive, in the obligation it carries, with the social organism of which language is the instrument and the ends of which it is an effort to subserve." She went toward it, snow melting and pathering off her skirts to the floor. Another wave of her hand, and she could just make out the Hatter sitting in a chair in the shades under the hearth. He did not appear to see her through the haze, and of course continued, untiring.

"Of the two antithetic terms in the Greek philosophy one only was real and self-subsisting, that one was Ideal Thought as opposed to that which it has to penetrate and mould."

One foot down, and she placed the heel of the other just against the damp toe of her boot, edging, easing her way across the room until she was at his knee. Now she could get a better look at him, simply… sitting on a chair. Talking, not really to himself, but as though he were merely broadcasting the words, a mouthpiece or a conduit. He did look tired, not at all possessed of himself, but vacant, disconnected, teetering on a blank stupor.

"The other, corresponding to our Nature, was in itself phenomenal, unreal, without any permanent footing, having no predicates that held true for two moments together; in short, redeemed from negation only by including indwelling realities appearing through…"

She drew a deep breath and let it out, alive with possibility.

Alice stood with her toes pointed forward and slowly, deliberately, bent until she was aligned with his entire field of vision, inescapable. She half-imagined there to be a thin invisible wire between her own pupils and his; she pulled it taut, perfectly balanced, and gazed at him steadily, just above the dark circles. The Hatter trailed off, suddenly distracted and stunned into silence by the miraculous appearance she had effected, as though she'd descended onto the floorboards. She blinked, and the light gesture hooked his presence of mind, his wide eyes watching her, and held. Alice finally spoke low and gentle.

"Your hair wants cutting."

This took the Hatter aback somewhat, for his mouth was slightly open in what she thought might be surprise, and when he did not resume his monologue, Alice slid out of her apron pocket the handle on the sheep-shears, just enough to show him what they were.

"Shall we have a look?" and strode with a perfectly casual air until she was in the light from the window. It was with the automation of a sleepwalker that he joined her, the chair grating in a rumble over the wood in his wake, and then the Hatter edged himself onto the chair, his back to her.

She hadn't lied, but she hadn't contradicted what the cow had told her, either, as it was more for care than growth. In the failing sunlight his hair seemed dingy and grey, the curls wilted and spent—assuredly not the dashing white locks of before, thick fluming waves tamed backward. There was spitting bind of rasped frustication right at the back of his head, dry and bunched from having turned his head back and forth over the same spot on the pillow for hours on end.

Alice ran her thumb over the the mass before she looked up at the white that was across the outside sill and down to where the firewood was stacked.

"You've got a knot," she said kindly, taking out the shears again, "Why don't I cut it out, and then we'll do something about all this fog. I think a nice bath would help sort things." And he did not respond, but she began, with the shy hand of a novice, to squeeze the blades together and work them gingerly about the twists and kinks to avoid the unnecessary drama of an accidental lop, pausing to reassess her angles often.

And in this way Alice worked smoothly, apart from when she found the little curl looped in on itself tucked away—she barely gave a thought to snipping it right out. Holding it in her hand, she did feel regret at having severed such a piece of symbolism. But then she slipped it into her pocket with the other things and the little blue jar and went back to the knot.


	23. Chapter 23

Don't want to bother you, baby  
But I'm bleeding too  
Are you needing me like I'm needing you?  
Even my shadow leaves me all alone at night  
Guess I need to start to take my own advice  
"Charity Case," Gnarls Barkley

I give myself very good advice  
But I very seldom follow it  
_Alice in Wonderland, _1951

* * *

If there was anything at the taproot of the Hatter's recrudescence, surely it was Alice who held it in her hand, whether she knew it or not. Dragging the firewood from the outside alcove to the hearth was no task to relish, but she did this all for the hope of some future; uncertainty or not, she was determined to meet it, and only came to realize her perseverance once she had begun the work, for she had no plan in mind.

The hearth in the kitchen was where he had managed to stuff the table and rug before she had taken off—they seemed to have made a return to their posts in the meantime, albeit soot-streaked. She did not make unnecessary inquiries, and he offered no explanation. Indeed, the firewood was now her primary task, for though the fog was thin, it had an irritating way of obscuring things so that Alice wound up bonking her knee on the hutch: summarily she _required_ a fire, and post-haste.

It was at this point Alice wished with fervor that she had a pair of gloves on hand. Walking to and from the farmhouse and the barn had been a chapped effort rewarded with the lamplight and warm flank on an amused bovine; the close of this venture would find her with more work in wood wanting a flame. Her fingernails had little crescents broken out of them from the slicing air and her hands trembling from tire as she brought in an armful—the stack had never been parceled into faggots. She stood now thinking just before the mantel, split among her choices. The main thing seemed to be to get it all safe inside before it was buried, but she hesitated whether to attempt starting a fire now and risk the weather. Her stomach yawned, and Alice let the planks clatter onto the grate before braving out once more.

There would be no work in the morning, and possibly for a few days hence; this was a vile storm. She had come up through the dale and managed to keep so solitary and focused a thought as to be uncowed, but now it was inescapable, the flakes getting in on her lashes and freezing against her eyelids. She waved it off, she spat it out, coughing, she tugged her locks over her ears, but the snow came from every side, even blew up from the ground, knocking her into desperation. Alice flailed like that for several minutes as though the locusts had descended, then managed to scoop up a pair of logs and make it indoors before she choked on the ice. And twice more she went, partly blinded but moving fast and rather sloppily to get it all done.

She made to set another armload onto the floor, but nearly dropped it when she found, to understandable surprise, the Hatter, his forehead set above the hearth, leaning his long frame, hands dangling, into the light coming now out of the dark cavern of a firebox, which was nearly as tall as he. Alice stood gazing into the flame for a moment. It never occurred to her to be struck by his work, interpret it as some gesture of kindness or benevolence. Alice was only engaged in the rapidity with which the fire had appeared while she was dashing about; it was no roaring furnace, of course, but it had caught, and actually seemed reassuring—stable, even. He turned his head, keeping his temple against the bricking, to look at her.

"This place has a steamer system," she heard him say, and she went over to see what he was on about. Indeed, there seemed to be, just left to the flames proper, a blacked iron thing with pipes going up into the chimney, not quite a stove. She turned to look at him with an expression, glimmering her old ways of exasperated confusion.

"Who puts a stove in a hearth? Why not have a coal range, an oven, a copper, even? Barking mad way to—" she rubbed at her eye and waved her hand at him, though he had not protested or defended the thing. "No, no, it isn't your fault, you didn't design it. How does it work?" she continued, bending down to view it better. It had a door, but no grate.

"Heats water," he said, plain as that, and went to sit down on a chair, looking pale but calm. Alice followed the pipes with her eyes, then turned round full to look at the ceiling.

"For the bathtub," she said in revelation. "The cooking's on a hearth, but there's heated water piped through the house for baths, I've never heard of such—" but suddenly remembered the sort of person who was living across the dale, and what she had told Alice earlier. She inspected the thing carefully, and still came up short. "But you'd have to carry the water from a river, that's so much more work." She just caught the slightest sound out of him—perhaps a very slight cough or clearing of his throat—and Alice turned to find the Hatter watching the snow drip in patches and pools from her cloak and skirts onto the rug, puddling at her boots. To this, she replied somewhat wryly, "All right, yes, thank you."

And so for this Alice found herself acting the Aquarius, though somewhat provincial, bearing fresh snow in a stone pickling crock to the potbelly 'til it seemed fit to burst. It was a juggling act; she meant to ask when was enough, but turned to find his having wandered off elsewhere. A bang followed by protracted clanging over her head seemed to indicate that he had found a way to occupy the rest of the evening. By now it was far long dark outside, and so Alice rested herself a bit before the flames, surrounded by the bark of her labors.

_This_ was nice, though her repose was backed with anxious tension and a headache that bolted straight through one temple and out the other. Still, the drowsy warmth out of the grate and the occasional echo of water dripping upstairs did much to mitigate the sound of the wind. She turned to the chair but for a moment—her stomach had announced itself earlier, and was veering on the wrong side of petulant now. The larder had been left alone while she had been gone, she discovered with an eyebrow upturned, but she made something of the ham and sourdough, staying her hand with a sickened look from the butter the wife had so bumptiously slipped into the haversack. She had nearly managed to escape without reminder of all that churning, but sighed and set it into the cupboard regardless.

Properly slumberous, Alice fell at last into the rocker, tucking her cloak in around her from where it had hung to dry.

In the morning she found the fire dimmed slightly, but pale and dusty from having gone out it was not. Alice sat a moment yet, and couldn't remember having stoked it in the night. Turning to the window, she squinted in bright white, the snow and the sky all dazzling. She had awoken at an obscenely late hour, and wrestled her way out of the rocker to stand stiff before the hearth.

Finding the door on the room upstairs ajar, Alice did not heed her instinctive propriety, and entered. He was flopped back wrongways on the hideous four-poster, legs so far over the side that his toes skimmed the rag rug. She went to lean over him, mushing her knees into the side of the mattress. The Hatter was again in that all-consuming state of unconsciousness—she could never be sure if he was asleep or if he'd simply shut off for a while. At least he was breathing, but it was a dry, high-pitched rasp. The general scene was of someone who'd been too tired to make the effort to climb into rest properly but found himself there by accident instead. Alice pushed up on his chin to make his mouth close, but it popped back out with a smack and a gasp out of him, and he went on.

"Wake up," she insisted, and set her hand just below his shoulder. "It's late, aren't you hungry?" A bit like talking to her old dolly, right down to the loose arms, but then again not in the least, and she didn't at all want him to be this way. Alice couldn't decide whether to shake him; he was in a terrible way and she _was_ doing her best at adopting a bit of… what word did she want, _mansuetude_, for after all, vinegar and honey &c. And the half-circles, which she couldn't quite resolve in her mind—insomniacs had dark smudges beneath their eyes, and he was an insomniac when he was pleasant, but when he slept (or did whatever this was) they marred his face. The Idle Place kept its charges in stasis—perhaps now he was leveling off the effects. She let the mattress creak slightly at the angle beneath her, drawing one knee up; he had managed to secure the slightest wedge of peace when there was a great white drought on, and here she was, trying to snatch it out from him.

Alice hesitated in hovering over him, thinking that perhaps she _ought_ to let him rest, that perhaps it was not so _very_ important that he be coaxed back into routine or schedule or however he directed himself on a daily basis. And in her delay to speak again, the Hatter opened his eyes, clear and focused as if he'd been awake the whole time, avoiding her—but his expression betrayed nothing. She realized her hand was still on him, and her hair was falling from the bun to drape low near him; she could feel his pulse, distant and vague but reverberating as through a drumhead.

They looked at each other like that, and he seemed to be waiting for direction, she realized.

"Come on, it's light out, and you can wash your hair," Alice said finally, the word from above. She wanted to say, "I don't know why you didn't before," but instead went downstairs with such finality that he could not help but follow.

She boiled the water in the cast-iron this time, and set it next on the washboard next to the square tin tub. Having put the gnarled lump of soap into his hand, Alice made to stoke the fire, but was given pause by the look on his face. He turned the thing over, observing it coolly with an anthropologist's gaze, dropped it back into her hand, and promptly dragged over one of the straightbacked chairs from the table.

"Wait, what are we doing," she protested in a flat voice as he went for the stairs, and had to bite her tongue from declaring that she wasn't his mother, or a nurse, either. He returned bearing the cushions from her sofa, and stacked them atop the seat, then himself on those, and sat back, mild and expectant. Alice stood exactly where she was and looked him in the eye with a petulant air.

There was silence for a few moments, and he began to look the slightest bit fidgety.

"I don't want water on my face," he said, but she wasn't certain whether he meant this as a justification, or an admonition.

"You can't stick your head in there yourself?"

"I have got," he said in the voice of someone who is expending utmost patience, "A devil of a headache. If you would be so kind."

"Have you caught cold?" She put her hand on the edge of the tub and got a tankard off a hook. He closed his eyes and said,

"No," but it was in that deep, forward nasal that comes upon those with an affliction in the sinuses.

Alice sighed. "Flatten your neckband," and she half-expected some smug look of victory to come over him, but it did not.

With the warmth of his neck there stacked gently along the flour sack-covered edge, she leaned him back toward the basin, rolled her sleeves, and pulled some of the water into the mug. It was still just a bit too warm, but she ran it in tandem with her hand over the line where the white in his hair met the freckles in his flesh, banking it away from his eyes and collar, and she nearly gasped.

She had expected to see the dim white turned to sopping grey, as we do, and found instead fishscale slips between her fingers. Flashing, shining, his hair was bolted through with bits of it, full tilt of strange new mirror. On her introspective pause to look more closely, interrupting his commune with the warm water, he slitted his eyes a bit to see her.

"It turned silver," she said quietly, staring at it very hard.

"Does that," mumbled he in a flat voice, absent that familiar tone of clownishness. He shrugged his shoulders together, more an effort to keep warm than to dismiss her surprise, and closed his eyes again. Alice kept pouring, and kept pouring, watching it go into tiny shooting variations, not existing merely as one great glister effect, but a hundred thousand tinsels, all in straight silver. She scrubbed efficiently, careful to see another transformation, but it merely lathered and nothing more. Alice felt rather self-conscious with her fingers knuckle-deep in his hair, glad he seemed keen to remain distant with his eyes closed—but soon the silver was obscured.

Over the sink and through the window, Alice's gaze went to play in the bright yard. The day was clearer, with thick bubbles of opaque clouds against the deepest, richest blue, so saturated that it flirted with purple at the edges of the horizon. Puffy white bounded past, rushing, never straying to cap the view or hide the sky for too long. The storm had set the snow high and wide, twinkling at her in broad daylight, landed with smooth perfection in mounds and waves. It reminded her of her mother baking, of the way she leveled flour off the measuring cup with a knife, back and forth until it ran smooth, a seamless flow of white. Out there somewhere was a door home; out there were ever so many people, some she knew, and some she wondered about. She followed the drifts with her eyes, past the trees, past the hills, and squinted, fancying a plume of smoke on the horizon.

The Hatter opened his eyes and looked up: Alice was lost, deep in thought or memory, and had put her elbows on the edge of the tub to lean over in dreamy abstraction while her fingers slowed from their mechanical flexing to wind mindless avenues and swirls into the locks. His back ached in this contortion and he was about to get her attention right up until the moment her thumbs found the gap of flesh just behind his ears and she cradled his head in her hands, fingers splayed. Such ponderous and yet such absent-minded stroking; even in his vacant state, he half-wondered where her thoughts dallied. Down at his base, she pushed and slid up toward his crown, faded, and repeated. Down from the bottom, and up, slow and meditative, pausing for a brief moment to circle his temples—he found himself drifting in time to whatever tide she was calculating with this idle massage, and then something inside him opened up and he could breathe so much more easily, for just a moment. Had he the self-possession, he might have leaned and tilted his head to push her efforts in on themselves. As it was, gravity set its fingertip at the center of his forehead and pressed gently, weighting him back into the cushions so that all he could hear was the sound the lather made between her fingers. She piled it all together and cupped her hand over it, running back and forth, her thumb brushing the widow's peak; her hands were light and firm paradoxes.

Alice only came to when her neck went stiff, then inspected her work so far, deemed it a sufficient exercise in familiarity, and rinsed.

When she was done, he sat up and leaned far forward, almost to put his head between his knees. But he took the towel from her and scrubbed it over his locks. When he sat up, a bit pink in the face, his hair was dull and then white again, and he opened his mouth to gasp and sigh for a breath. The Hatter stood and began to move deliberately, as though he would go back upstairs. Alice was not _so_ surprised by its odd coloring that she would forget her curiosity to see how he did it up, how he got it to stay stuck in that half-waved, half-curled way at the back of his head. Rather she reached for the comb.

"Don't you want to untangle it?" she asked, and he paused in the doorway to give her a strange look that actually had a bit of amusement just detectable.

"Probably break the comb," was his reply.

"Wait," she called to him, and opened the hutch while she dried her hands. Ham and bread. And a dollop of butter, if only so she didn't have to look at it anymore. It was a sparse spread, but it was the best she could do given the circumstances. He gazed down at it for a moment, still pink and possibly a bit dizzy, the way he was blinking in bemusement, and the Hatter said,

"Oh," in a quiet grateful sort of way, and disappeared.

She tapped at the logs and set the cast-iron to dry, and then Alice positioned herself at the table to begin going through the haversack, with all the things the farmer's wife had given her. This had included her sundry array of payments, some scratchy wool and a quintet of needles (she had hinted massively at wanting for a pair of gloves), the little bottle, and finally the silver hammer and clear jar with the blue light inside. Setting these all in a row upon the table, she turned the phial of Drink-Me between her fingers, watching the syrupy liquid, a deep reddish-brown, tilt back and forth. Alice frowned, for she couldn't remember the stuff being quite this color—clear, perhaps, from the vague annals of memory—but then, the label had said _Officinal_, and the woman had given it to her for complaining of a toothache, of all things.

"Hmm," she said, and set it aside. The blue light casting out of the glass was practically roiling. Pressing her hand along its side to pick it up had the curious effect of causing it to mimic her; it shifted into a deeper azure where her flesh met the glass and squeezed in close, straining with color. Alice tested the lid as she had before and out it easily came with a soft crackling _plug_, to her surprise. She leaned in close and tilted the glass toward her; the blue light was really more of a gas, now slowly winding its way out of the jar to hang smoky blue trails midair. This thing, this mass, had no drive to dissipate, remaining instead a hazy flickering presence until she reached out and drew her finger through it, breaking a ring. Alice raised her eyebrows and waved her whole hand through it, fingers outstretched as though to paw over harpstrings. The cloud tilted and swayed in response; it looked like a luminescent gas, but it felt curious, heavy, almost liquid. She looked down at her dry hand, and back up to find the thing attracted back to itself, reforming into a soft small glow, righting and aligning with her.

She stared into it, and she half-fancied that it stared back into her, but before she could get too close once more, there was a splashing sound from upstairs; she looked up at the ceiling and remembered the Hatter upstairs. Alice held the little apothecary jar in her palms and considered how to corral the now-rising cloud back into its container—she waved her arm within its entirety, making a gesture inside, and it flowed with an almost inquisitive bent back down into the glass, where she capped it to save for another day.

It had been a while since she had watched the man with the white hair disappear to the upper realms, and Alice began to wonder if he had finally managed to fall asleep, or perhaps drown. With brisk virtue she made her way to the top of the stairs, and knocked at the dark door on the left.

"You all right?" It was a moment before he answered her in a low voice, echoing slightly.

"Yes." She hesitated here.

"Do you want me to light another fire?"

"No."

Alice sighed, twisting her fingers together with her apron, and retreated down the stairs. She wasn't in a hurry to meddle with him much more until long after it grew dark, and only when the fire sank dim did she climb the stairs and push open the bedroom door again. He was still wrongways on the bed with his mouth popped open, and she crossed to the other side of the frame with a sigh to pull his shoulders up to the head, coming back around to deposit his legs where they belonged. Of course he would sleep the opposite direction of what proper people did, she thought, and adjusted him toward the vicinity of the pillows. She came to sit near his elbow and watched him for a moment, still wary that perhaps there was a very slight chance he was awake, but she did not have the impression this time that he might have opened his eyes and laughed at her folly.

Very slowly she leaned forward and with a smooth rolling motion, placed her hand just under his shoulder, where she could feel something far off, but she moved away again, feeling a keen sense of embarrassment.

The snow was still too high to move about the countryside with any ease, which was lucky, because Alice slept late again, and once more she found the fire in the hearth refreshed. It must have been several hours since he had heated the boiler, though; the firewood had rifts and cracks along the side from drying. She looked about the room and thought carefully on how much of the stuff would be required to sustain them were the snow to remain. It was not a heartening calculation, and she traipsed up to knock upon the door.

"Yeah?" he called, and she thought perhaps she detected a touch of brightness in his voice, a slight change.

"Is it getting cold in there?" Alice frowned, it was odd for a body to spend so much time bathing—wasteful, excessive.

"It's fine," he said easily, "You can come in if you want."

"Are you decent?"

"Of _course_."

The door eased open rather slowly, and Alice arrived at one of those rare scenes that she only ever seemed to find in the Wonderland. He was still in the bath, but there were two things which stopped her from slamming the door shut again. The first was that the room was steamy and warm, warmer even than downstairs by the fire, a strange feat, but a marvelous and immediately intriguing one as well. No _wonder_ he stayed up here. She had heard of northerners and their restorative saunas—even the window was fogged over, and she stepped into the heat, latching the door behind her to lean against it, reveling in warmth at last. To go out into the snow after this would be a crime. The second thing she noticed after a moment was the large sheet draped across the tub, its edge nearly up to the occupant's chin. The Hatter in the bathtub was about as scandalous as watching someone in a covered push chair be wheeled down the sidewalk for an airing.

He looked at her, almost sanguine.

"Excuse me," said Alice, and disappeared through the steam and out the door. She reappeared a short while later with things bunched in her hands, and stood awkwardly with her back against the door again.

"There's a seat in the window," he said, nearly cheerful, and she set the cushion on the wooden panel to take up her needles and yarn, her back to him. They both sat in the heat and comfortable silence, and for the first time in a while, Alice's shoulders relaxed and her hair curled just a bit at the edges.

It was later, the next day or after, perhaps, and she was kneeling on the floor, the large ugly cushion beneath her, the wooden cabinet with the copper bathtub close by, giving off enormous waves of warmth.

"You spend more time in the bath than Marat did," she said quietly through the pin in her mouth, but in truth she was glad he did. Now Alice was mending her apron, for it was the only one she could find and it had grown quite worn at the hem. She had given up on the needles with no small frustration—the things had collapsed obstinately every time she had balanced them together in a frame, and she had nearly snapped them into halves for kindling. He shifted about and turned his head to look at her, the water making comfortable sloshing sounds.

"Are you supposed to be Charlotte Corday?" he said, his voice quiet even in the porcelain echo. "You dress like her."

"I take what the armoires give me."

"All white stripes on black?" He paused musingly for a moment. "Break them down and burn them." She was about to let this pass before Alice realized what a perfectly good idea that was, and half-smiled. She stitched on for a moment, and then wavered, trying to come up with how best to pose the question on her mind.

"What's wrong?"

There was a long pause, and Alice regretted it. The Hatter, for his part, seemed content to let the silence lapse while she parked her needle through a stitch to hold it there.

He turned his chin, and spoke so softly the words were nearly mired in the humidity.

"What do you think?"

Alice sat back so they faced each other and looked at him, really, for the first time in a while. He kept very still, with only the steam coming up near his face, and the occasional drip breaking the echoing silence. He just looked at her, not trying to get her to realize anything, but simply open to her observations, waiting for her to make some connection on her own, and he properly put his trust in her, for Alice was, after all, a clever girl, one to figure things out. He wasn't tired at all—the plum dark curves weren't signs of exhaustion, for he had been gorging on rest to the point of distention or sickness, and she had taken great care to put him back together; yet there was a piece out of order, not missing per se, but offset, out of order even in his out-of-orderedness. And then she did see it, right there, it was so obvious.

The girl sat forward on her knees, the cushion still beneath her, and smoothed her dry palms against the edges of his face. He didn't flinch, not even she began to invert her wrists so that her fingers lay along his brow and her upside down thumbs were parallel to his nose.

"Close your eyes," she said very quietly, and he did, but then a small worried line began to crease between his eyebrows. Alice shut her eyes as well and pressed, feeling and searching for it, or at least the start of it, pushed her thumbs toward each other with the bridge of his nose caught between them, squeezed _hard_, one of them sighing from it but she wasn't certain who, him or her, her front teeth mashing, forcing it, the pressure turning her knuckles hot.

There was a crackling snap: a pair of staccatos followed by a sick sound.

She felt his whole being, his whole essence, tense in a tight wind before he jerked away from her as if he couldn't help it, his nerves completing the action before the thought of it came, the water bending up in waves to smack the sides of the bathing tub in violent response. He doubled over into the cloth, his hands at his face, and she couldn't look at him, the way he curved into and on himself, a horrible silence coming out of him but for the echoing of the bathwater. She hadn't meant to hurt him so badly, only to fix him and get him back, and Alice bent over her own knees again, sinking to the floor, squeezing every part of herself shut and together until she heard a very great sloshing and fast footsteps, and then a door somewhere closed too hastily.

The little blonde form uncrumpled itself after a moment, and breathing deeply, gasping and sobbing without a single tear, she looked up to find a diluting watercolor of where his bloodstained palm had grabbed the side of the tub, and a splattering of red at the edge of the cloth. Alice stood, pushing past the tremor in her knees, her legs numb and uncertain from kneeling too long, and watched the print slowly turn gradient and finally pull and fade from the porcelain into the rocking waters. She turned in a careful and controlled motion and placed one foot in front of the other next to each of the glistening splotches that he had barely recorded in his haste, deliberate and slow, until she reached the closed bedroom door.

In her heart of hearts, she would have been shocked, but still relieved, to hear some sound from within, but there was nothing, no sobs of agony or pained groans; the paling silence in the bedchamber beyond kept her hand lightly trained over the flat of the door and away from the knob. Alice stepped back and went downstairs with her arms over her middle, feeling sick. She rushed for a spoon, flipping it end over end in her trembling haste, and went for the bottle of Drink-Me to bear it back upstairs, but bolted against the table, and shook its lading. The tin of beeswax smacked against the floorboards, and she just looked up to see the apothecary jar tilt off-balance, seesawing at the edge, the blue light pulsing wildly.

Her arm flashed out and the girl grabbed for it, but it flinched just out of her reach and hit the floorboards with a single smack, no rebound or bounce. Alice bent with a dread in her middle and found that indeed, it was ruined, burst into chunks and shards. Suddenly the light grew, expanded, wheeled up in front of her like a plague of locusts awoken from the fields to be whipped into a curse; it filled the room and stretched to the ceiling, it it flapped against the curtains and clouded the windows, and Alice breathed it in, coughing and choking all the way down to the floor.

She was going to vomit. Alice turned her head ever so slightly and the entire room rendered itself at impossible angles, as though being sucked, from her perspective, into a distorting vortex. She was _definitely _going to vomit. This pain was reminiscent of something, and she fancied she had experienced something like it in the past, but this was somehow worse, a thick heaving, something that cleaved into the low end of her back and burned her inner thighs. Something was happening, and she was going to be mad with the agony by the passing of the next second, but Alice clenched her teeth together, gasping at the same time, and tried to uncloud the blur in her vision. There was something thundering nearby, and she arched her back to see over her own forehead—for she was on the floor somehow—but her own insides betrayed her again and she had a very clear image behind her eyelids of a bright circle, a flaming hoop with no end. She knew what all of this was, and she hated it, she _despised_ the despairing fear that waited in the shadows for an inevitability. Alice wondered stupidly what delusion felt like—perhaps freedom—and she curled her toes under so hard that surely they were going to break, snap clean and dangle numbly from her.

When she opened her eyes again, she was on the rotting gold sofa in the kitchen, lying on her back. The sofa didn't belong here. Her toes ached. The sound from earlier was tempered now, but ceaseless, and she lifted her head, the room back to its usual proportions. The Hatter was standing at the sink with his back to her, and Alice hesitated before trying out her legs experimentally and rising. She crept toward him slowly, thinking of what she could possibly say, but paused just shy of him. The man stood with his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, working feverishly.

"Are you all right?"

"Hmm?" he turned his head just slightly, and she could only see the underside of his chin. His voice was one of anxious fixation with his task, as though he had only now recognized her presence in the room—although she was certain he had been here before. Alice nearly spoke again, but as she got closer, she forgot what she was going to say. He was holding a rough-looking brush, scrubbing it obsessively over his bare hands before slopping it into the pan of scalding water, scouring desperately, the sound being a loud rasp raking into his poor flesh, over and over. She could barely see his hands through the clouds of steam, but his forearms had turned bright red from the relentless scraping and heat.

"You're going to hurt yourself doing that so hard," she said, and ignoring her, he replied,

"It's in the cupboard."

"What?"

"What you're looking for, it's in the cupboard." Alice turned her neck to look at the thing in the corner. It could have risen out of the floorboards beneath a spotlight; there was no avoiding it, it seemed white and shining even in the darkness, though the blackened wood was shadowed. She went to it, every plank creaking with her step forward, and unlatched it to ease open the squealing door. The bundle of cloth was perhaps a cooling pie or loaf of bread, but felt heavier, maybe even a cake out of the oven. But there was no light in the hearth, no scent in the air. Alice brought it in her arms to stand beneath the white in the window and unfold each corner, peeling back the layers to see what had emerged.

At first she was surprised, and shifted it to the crook of her arm, thinking perhaps she'd made a mistake, or that she held it backwards. It was a soft and sweet porcelain baby doll—the still, silent little form had chubby arms and bowed legs with knobbly knees, its fingers and toes all curled up into tiny fists, but as she lifted the cloth at its head, she felt the searing thrill of something pinching between her shoulder blades before sliding down her spine.

The moppet had no face. It had a head, of course, and upon that were the smooth depressions where eyes might have gone, and a little mound suggesting a nose, but no distinguishing features—it was only the beginning of something, or maybe a prototype. She could have blinked and put it back where she had found it, sad to see that it had never been finished for love and play, only she held it closer to the light and frowned, for there was something strange about it. And then she saw what it was. Its limbs began to twitch and its fingers unfurl, the featureless head turning this way and that, sightless, mindless jerking, writhing like a strange lizard there in her arms.

It was alive, and Alice screamed.


	24. Chapter 24

She is a friend of my mind.  
She gather me, man.  
The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.  
It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.

Toni Morrison, _Beloved_

Alice did not pause for reflection upon opening her eyes and dizzily forcing herself from where she lay in the empty kitchen—instead, she crunched into the remnants of the smashed jar, seized both the spoon and the bottle of Drink-Me and heaved up the stairs two at a time. The upstairs bedroom door was still closed, of course, and she went for the latch with such momentum, Alice up and up the stairs and through, that the door stuttered back against the wall too soon like punctuation mid-sentence.

He was pacing erratically, hands twisted deep into the dark panels of the dressing gown, switching gears and tacking back and forth from the empty fireplace to the bed, apparently trying to claw his way out of the air by the way he was gesturing. The worn brocade sleeves were too long, dangling far past his fingertips. When he realized she was there, he lifted both cuffs to his head as though to rip out his hair starting from the back, and made a horrible sound that was just beyond a groan but not yet a wail: it oscillated between the two. It occurred to Alice that he had been waiting for her, holding it in until now.

"Oh _god_," she heard him say, stertorous, and he turned, came at her headlong, grabbed her by the arms, and pinned her up against the door, the spoon ringing as it hit the floor. Somewhere in her middle she began to burn so hot that she felt a lick of frigidity, and the intensity frightened her. He consumed Alice's line of sight, laid bare the physical consequences of her decision—the dark smudges under his eyes were now a bulging red, but she could see only a slight red line across the bridge of his nose. His philtrum, though, was what made her shrink against the wood. What had been such a lovely turn in his lip was thick crackled over with dark brown blood from where it had poured out of him, staining the lapels, and there was still a ferrous trickle, almost black but shining.

"Uh—" she started, not quite the word itself but a dry stutter from her throat.

"Oh, _yes_," he said, the rings of his irises very large, "Yes, _do_ _expound_."

She began again, patient and even. "I was only trying to—"

"Trying to _what_," he replied, and it was flat, but full of energy at the same time, he couldn't hold in the slight waver in his voice, positively gleeful with sarcasm. "Trying to _fix me_?" Alice swallowed; her stomach was rigid with the tension and thick iron stench blooming in the air. Even through the layers of clothing she could feel his thumbs gouging into her arms. "You're always doing this! I'm_ chaotic and broken_, and need _order_ and _regimen_ and _discipline_ to be cured of it, _don't I._"

"Well, I—" And he actually gave her a pause here, but she hadn't been expecting it, and Alice floundered for something to say before focusing her voice into something soothing. "Why don't you sit down and relax, I'm sure this is all very—"

"Don't," and he let go of her so suddenly that Alice actually dropped an inch to the floor, unaware that there had been a gap under her feet and bumbling for stability, "_Pa_tronize me," and she jumped at how hard the syllable came out with a bang.

"I'm not _trying to_, but you are making this more difficult than it needs to be!" Now she was getting angry, but spread her fingers out in deference and closed her eyes for a moment. His hands went back up to his head as he turned away; the Hatter began to pace once more, then she could hear him gasping, "How could you _do this to me?_" and she knew exactly what kind of pain it was from the sound of his voice. He wanted so desperately to break something, to force and transfer the agony out, to make the bed, or the stone fireplace, or even Alice, anything other than himself, possess all the misery and spite that were drowning out everything else. She crouched to get the spoon again, watching him carefully, then took a very deep breath and spoke.

"I brought somethin—"

"What is _WRONG WITH YOU?_" He was standing over by the window where he had when she had yelled at him before, and the repeat did not escape her.

"I'm _sorr-_" But he cut her off suddenly, shouting something she couldn't translate, it all sounding like word salad to her, thundering through a series of accents and fleeting semi-familiarities until he suddenly slapped her with French and moved on just as quickly. Alice cringed while the words still gritted out of him to drip on the floorboards like blood spatter. He leaned on the rocker, apparently voided of foreign obscenities, and swayed with it for a moment. She took the opportunity and crossed the room to curl both hands above his elbows, steering him gently around to sit.

"I wish you knew how much this hurts, you have _no idea_," he said, trying and failing at being vicious, the pent-up energy draining out of him—the pain was smothering his anger, and he sagged, hoarse now and sounding mostly sad.

"No, I don't," she said in a muted voice, "But screwing up your face won't help. Stay still and don't move, that's what makes it hurt worse."

"I don't hate you," he said weakly as she finished dosing out a small amount of the tincture and held it up to his lip, "But I hate you; I hate you." He closed his eyes and swallowed, and Alice suddenly felt like crying. Instead she pulled the spoon gingerly from his mouth, rotated it, and set the concave shape back over his tongue for just a moment.

"Come on." He rose, and she caught at his back along the shoulder blade, as he was still reeling in the sharpness. The man needed stability, _yes_; flailing about dangerously like this, the poor Hatter himself was a broken bone desperately needing a rigid surface to set and heal against, to be wrapped up and to quit struggling so. She adjusted the cushions upright, waited for him to lean against those, and then set his head along the top so he mightn't mash his face into them. And she hovered, half-seated, waiting while he held his breath.

It was slow, and he would not look at her, but eventually his pupils began to constrict down into pin pricks and he relaxed in bits and stages, first his neck, then an arm, and downward, sighing. Watching him progressively let go of the pain, Alice ran her tongue over the scar that was still on her bottom lip, near where her teeth came together. It tasted different there, a small pockmark of the ulcer from a long time ago, one that had lasted longer than usual. Probably it had been made worse by the sugar and lemonade she had drunk all that summer, but she remembered now with specific clarity the day her mother had given her a tin of white powder and told her it would feel better. The agony had been with her for so many days until then, it felt like she was digesting the inside of her own mouth with every word she spoke. It beat along with her, it woke her in the middle of the night when her teeth were dry and it stuck, it stung and pinched with her fork and toothbrush. White medicinal powder would have the blessed answer—all the secrets of relief, and she had stood before her vanity mirror with her lip turned down and a dab of it on her forefinger, then Alice had leaned forward and pressed it onto the canker.

The pain had been searingly unimaginable, worse than the sore itself, and she couldn't believe it was possible. It brought tears to her eyes, and she bent over, hissing and sucking back the saliva that had surged forth in response to such an unexpected thing, setting off a short series of vocalizations she refused to refer to with the word _moan_, doing her best to not scream and rend her hair from the roots, or bash in the mirror as the mood had so suddenly inspired her.

But it was all abruptly replaced by a complete and utter absence of the torture that had been hounding her, and that was the key. It wasn't so much a rush of pleasure as it was a break in sensation, and her shock had been equal to the person watching the rain suddenly cut off, disappear without a slowing of droplets. She had felt her pulse inside her own cheeks, the effervescent lift of her breath straight up through her head, and leaned into the vanity, gasping and stunned.

Smoothing her fingers against the edges of his hair and letting his head loll, Alice hoped the Hatter had found some genuine relief, but wondered what it cost.

She was careful to move softly and to peek around doorways when it grew close to dusk. Having swept up the glass downstairs and taken a few deep breaths to quell the strange undulating sensation in her middle while bent over the table (she was not ill, Alice knew this much, but it was a curious warmth, like feeling the strip of heat after a first sip of drinking chocolate—though unlike chocolate this remained and she worried what an ulcer might feel like), Alice set the boiler again and went for the bath. It was the first she'd had in some time, and though of course it was a bath in ways and means, the room did not fill with steam and the water was not quite as hot as it had seemed before, when she had sat in the window and relaxed with him just over her shoulder.

Dipping down so that her knees came up and her chin went in, she cracked her toes, listening to the strange shimmering echo.

Alice had no idea what it had meant. She had gone to the cupboard after assuring herself that he'd be all right—_eventually_—and perhaps forgive her—_hopefully_—while standing an arm's length away, and leaned forward to ease open the door, which did squeak in an ominous way. One step back, forcing a single eye to open and look upon it, and Alice found nothing inside of it but dishes. The door had gone closed with one push of her finger before the backwards retreat to the sink, only turning on it after a moment's pause. What did babies portend? New beginnings, innocence, that sort of thing? She idly blew a few bubbles on the flat water's edge. There was nothing soft or sentimental there. Something horrible and strange hovered at the darkest part of shadows. She didn't want to think about it lest she picture the writhing little body-

With her damp combed hair over her shoulder and dressed in a clean housefrock and warm shawl, Alice pushed open the door with the flat of her hand. The idea that she perhaps did not belong there and should not have entered didn't strike her until she was already standing over him, bedside, and Alice couldn't quite remember having come into the room, having clicked over like a magnet, the thought of which made her blink. But he was still, with eyes closed, and that was enough for now; Alice moved with straight back to the the door, floating her steps carefully, only to pause.

There was a sound somewhere in the room; it wasn't her, for it didn't stop when she did. Alice turned, pushing against her own muscles, and crossed to the bed silently—it seemed to be coming from him. She listened. Not a snore, exactly, but almost a… methodical, rhythmic sound. He was breathing well enough, but the noise persisted, regulated in ways that the Hatter himself did not ensconce. Alice listened again, and went to the other side of the bed near the wall to stick her hand down at the edge of the mattress and feel along the length of it.

Wedged between the frame and the slats was the pocket watch she had idly fiddled with at the ball. Always in a waistcoat pocket, whether starched white or that swirled blue pattern, always the gold chain threaded through a button hole. She turned it over and held it near the light for inspection. It was an old thing, a vastly old thing—there was a winding key dangling on the chain—just a bit too thick to be manufactured, just a bit too oddly shaped to be anything but an expensive commission.

The signs and swirls handworked on the outside were still quite clear and distinctive; he had looked after it, and the watch was only rubbed smooth near the stem. It was so loud here, resting in the palm of her hand, ticking away like a living thing but for its cool touch. Alice straightened the gold chain with a _prrrrrpt_, buzzing across the metal, and punched down on the crown to pop open the hunter-case, every sound so solid and crisp and real. There was no inscription inside the ornate case, just faded, old-fashioned numerals on the face. She hadn't looked so closely before; around the outer ring of the bezel was a thin, long-faded stain, a jammy purple that made her press her lips together in secretive smile.

How strange, how charming, this antique. It wasn't like other pocket watches; other pocket watches were flat and white and plain. Serious faces and serious timepieces for serious people. This was rich and complicated and made her think of tables with legs made of carved cherubs holding up horns of plenty, clockwork harpsichords, ancient maps with misshapen continents—of excess and of discovery. A beautiful device, an instrument for _measuring_ time, not for checking and waiting. Not for someone of impulse but of… very strange… patience. The words slowed and Alice pondered that last bit for a terse moment, thinking back once more to the ball, when he had spoken of her being stranded in an awful cottage with a man who might consider pawning off such a thing to get back to civilization. She looked down at the whorled images. He would never do that—this was too dear; she could tell.

The more she listened to its sound, the stranger Alice felt. It was as though she were waiting for the next tick to be the last. It was soothing, and she closed her eyes to hear it, that soft clack, each part having to work in flawless harmony—almost a rocking sound, the ticking so eager to get to the next moment and the next, a pendulumatic back and forth. She cupped it in her open palms, the chain streaming out between her fingers, and looked up at him, wondering how he could sleep on; she was practically breathing in time with the thing. But the Hatter did not awaken, and she pressed her hands together to snap it shut with great delicacy, then slowly hooked it over the sash on the dressing gown and back through the ring to secure it.

He did not seem quite so frightening now as he had before with his marred and broken face so close to her by the door, his anger radiating down in sharp slashes. The Hatter was slid further down into the pillows, having been discharged from his suffering for the moment. Alice took a handkerchief out of her apron pocket and dipped it into a chipped mug of water on the nightstand, carefully dabbed at the rust-brown coating his lip, watching for signs of recrimination. When she had got what she could without pressing into him, the girl sat back and looked him over. The man was quite _out_, and she wondered what he was thinking about, or _dreaming_ about, if indeed he did.

It was the next day before she ventured upstairs again, and once she was there Alice hesitated. The thought of leaving him to awaken in pain gave her pause, but she was loathe to be confronted with another broadcast of his profound irritation with her, and the lowest part of her back ached and twinged from it all.

To mitigate the whole thing, she sat in the rocker staring at the knitting slumped in her lamp until she heard him stirring, then made pretenses of rising for some errand elsewhere when his voice came from the bed, surprised and a bit naive-sounding, all mashed together.

"Where're you going?"

"… I was—" She didn't know the answer. Alice paused at the foot and peeked round the post to gauge his expression, but stayed her steps and spoke as neutrally as she could muster. "Do you want something to eat? Are you hungry?"

He didn't answer, and she stood feeling a kind of impatience both to go and to stay. Mixed with remembrance of her determination in pressing her fingers around his nose, it grew in weight and gave her spine a sharp pinch of guilt and self-doubt. She was already halfway into a stride.

"Wait," he said in protest, but the Hatter looked like he was on the edge of unconsciousness again, lolling into the pillows and linens. He seemed to have already forgotten that she had paused in his eye line.

"Are you sure?" Alice tried not to sound unsure lest she give him a reason to send her out of the room. "Why?"

She heard him sigh and he motioned as though to sit up but failed at it, and Alice's hand went to the bottle in her pocket before she finally took a step toward him to see better against the shadows encroaching on the head of the bed. She produced it, and the spoon besides, slowly, there being a distinct flavor of awkwardness in the air.

"You don't want anything to eat with this?"

"Hmm, no," she could make out. She made sure the dose was smaller this time, and waited in the doorway for his eyes to close before wandering downstairs to poke at the fireplace.

But Alice could not stay away from the upstairs. There was within her a compounded inability to concentrate; she could put herself to knocking about the kitchen and suddenly come to herself only to realize that she was already standing over him, or that she had dragged a chair over by the nightstand. Attempts to capture her own mystical reappearance in the bedroom were thwarted by a kind of amnesia—she could not remember how she got up there, or why she was so set on it.

For his own part, the Hatter blinked, quiescent and slow, and seemed to be watching the ceiling move overhead. He was still bland, to be sure, but seemed to be fighting it, and she found that this gave her an anxious kind of pause, but Alice had put the bottle in the cupboard to ward off temptation.

"I'm bored," replied the Hatter in a hoarse distant voice to her self-conscious inquiry after him, and he almost sounded as though he were appealing to her for something. "Bored." Alice was at a loss as to how to remedy this until he languidly reached for the hank of yarn she'd been trying to wind and pulled it over his palms in a lazy stretch. She took up the free end of the length and began to loop it back and forth in a figure eight over her thumb and forefinger until she folded it over and started a ball. The cord dipped and pulled in courses, but especially plucked across his smallest finger on one hand. His hands tilted ever so slightly toward her each round of tension, then returned to him; back and then away, back and then away. Alice watched the strand wend over the gloves and wondered when he had put them back on, for surely he hadn't worn them in the bath, as they were looking quite rumpled and for the worse. She turned the ball over in her palm without looking, still staring at the gloves.

"What happened?"

He said it just above a whisper. Alice was trying to manage a certain stitch in her knitting without pitching the entire affair across the room, and her answer came out a bit short at first.

"Yesterday evening you were shouting at me."

It occurred to her that he hadn't been talking about that, and looked at him in something like alarm.

"Was I?" He was trying to remember, but quickly drifted into a muted distraction, privy to which Alice was not. She rolled her shoulders and gently reeled him in.

"You were quite upset."

"How?"

"Hmm?"

"How upset?"

"You, um… rather upset, I imagine."

He pressed his mouth closed in a way that suggested a hint of lucid concern, and said in a low voice,

"Oh."

Alice picked at her nail in response. She was thinking of all the things she was going to have to break to him eventually, a monumental list of things that stuck to her limbs and made it hard to move sometimes.

"I wouldn't blame you," she whispered.

"Are you feeling any better?" Alice finally got up the nerve to say. It was dusk several days later and she had eaten, sat now mildly while the back of her mind contemplated starting a fire in this hearth and abandoning the one in the kitchen. She turned; he was settled among the pillows and covers, somewhat dazed. His head was veering off to the side, and so Alice tried kindly to right him to avoid another demand for information regarding things wrong with her. "Can you hear me?"

His eyes tracked her back and forth, the look of someone watching for a certain car as the train roars past. The Hatter went along with whatever she was talking about, curious to find out if he were actually awake, as he was beginning to suspect. He was really warm, finally, and didn't quite want to move and upset the alignment that was making such a thing possible.

"Can I tell you that I'm sorry?" Alice tilted her head. "Though I don't suppose it would be fair to ask it when you're in a state like this," she went on.

"Hmm," he said dreamily, a placid expression on him.

"You're absolutely livid with me, you know," said Alice with something like boldness. "I broke your nose," that last part quiet.

"Did you? Am I?" trying to recollect something from a century before. He slowly looked down at himself, long over the bed, as though his feet would clue him in to the level of anger he was rumored to possess. "Huh."

If he had been any more certain in this apparent blasé attitude and not left it attributable to medication, Alice might have thought he was far too forgiving far too soon. But she allowed herself the indulgence of thought that he was in a wrong state of mind.

"Well, are you hungry?"

The Hatter appeared to be tentatively having a go at acknowledging his own consciousness.

"I don't—um," said the Hatter. He seemed to shrug, all neutral. She looked at him carefully, expecting a blank absence and finding a passive engagement, a detached observer gauging her and the room she occupied.

"Doubt I ought to give you any more medicine, you're still a bit loopy," said Alice, "But getting better," she added quickly, and then looked surprised at herself for saying it. "Do you want me to leave?"

"Oh, don't let's be silly," she thought she heard him say in an offhand drawl.

"What would you like to do?" Alice couldn't hear his reply. "Sorry?"

"Story, tell me a story."

She said in a lower voice, "I don't think I know any good stories."

There was a long silence during which Alice allowed the stream of her thoughts to flow forward, searching for nothing, merely coming to a point. The Hatter had leaned his head back along the top of the pillow and was gazing up at her expectantly, if a bit dully.

"You sure?"

His slow blink was a nod.

She folded her hands carefully in her lap, swallowed, and said the only thing she could think of.

"This," said Alice, "Is the epic of Gilgamesh, who was two-thirds god and one-third man."

Dusk had gone, and the fire in the kitchen was getting low. With a spitting candle in hand, she mounted the stairs once more to see if he were wanting another spoonful of the drink-me. By the time she reached the night stand and went to move the chair, the candle was in such a noisy fit that she blew it out in irritation. Alice squinted and let her eyes adjust to the dim light through the window; she could just tell that he was out again, and was glad—there was something about tipping her hand to keep him in a drowsy state that seemed worse than everything else she'd done up until now. Bending her knees so they pushed into the side of the bed, Alice listened to the muffled pocket watch somewhere on his person.

It was impulsively and half-dreaming that she leaned forward again to press her palm flat over his chest, feeling the distant throb underneath where her fingers split from her hand. It was better than the watch, and she bit her lip in the dark. There was something _reassuring_ about the steadiness, the constancy, of the watch, but his heartbeat, though not at all as precise or metronomic, was _better_, and this thought embarrassed the poor girl to several degrees, but she could not remove her hand from the warm shifting pulse, and she swallowed in something akin to a cringing terror, but her hand couldn't quite get up the motion. What possessed her? Alice lifted her hand off him at last and motioned in an arc around her to clench it at the small of her back.

He was still asleep, and she breathed for a few moments. She could still hear the watch if she stood very still, and it was then that Alice realized that one of his hands lay haphazardly over it, still with the rumpled glove.

In one smooth motion Alice looked at the Hatter's closed eyes, and back again.

They had been looking rather wrinkled and very grey—he was so awfully attached to the things to wear them all the time like that. Surely his sense of propriety on dress did not extend quite this far, and even then, these were forgivable circumstances. Still, he was a rather unusual sort of person, but of course the obvious thing was that she had never seen his hands before. He really ought to have it laundered by now—she could wash it, of course. That thought floated like a thin haze, a simple burst of steam that turned invisible before she had really considered it. She could feel the cuffs of her dress scratch against her wrists, and the itch went down into her fingers.

Alice leaned forward and very gently tugged at the tips of his glove before setting the thing aside.

The room was still quite dark, and darker even still with the light coming in over her shoulder, but Alice could see the vague shape of his hand in the greying blacks, had picked him up by the wrist and was inspecting this part of him he'd never revealed and which she'd never seen before. It was strange to think of it now, his hiding _something_ in such plain sight. There were fingers, five of them, she thought, and was just feeling a curious kind of heat along her spine when she felt a sudden and very faint, then quite certain, jolt. His fingers were moving. They twitched, and clenched, coming to life in an odd mechanical way. Alice jerked her head round to look at him so fast that her neck ached, but he was still—except his thumb and index, which were stiffly jerking and curling in on themselves, turning one way and then the other, pulsating. She felt the knuckles bend faster and more surely, stretching and readying, and she was feeling about for the glove when suddenly his entire grip came down hard around her and he was sitting bolt upright for the first time in days, eyes wide open in the darkness, staring at her. She could see the whites of his eyes, and panicked. Alice wrenched herself free, threw shut the door, and went to the sewing room at the end of the hall, slamming that one definitely as well.

Sinking onto the thready gold sofa, Alice put her elbows on her knees and both her hands at either side of her throat, pressing her fingertips inward, tentative, experimental. She could feel herself timing away, lightheaded, and pulled down her arms to look at herself, turning her own hands first up and then down, but they were still.


	25. Chapter 25

There's an illustration to go with this chapter. You'll find the link in my profile, I think you'll really like it!

* * *

Once I cut my hand  
But the wound was not part of me  
Now I'm a man  
There's a wound at the heart of me

The Apples in Stereo, "Stream Running Over"

* * *

In the morning Alice found him waiting for her down in the kitchen, pacing carefully, as though to be sure of his burgeoning lucidity. He turned to regard her, there motionless on the bottom step, and she took her hand from the staircase wall to run her thumb over her knuckles, unsure of what to say. They both stood in an awkward silence for nearly more than a minute, which is much longer than it sounds, even though neither of them was counting. He took a breath and sighed, beginning to pace again.

"Sit down," he said in a low voice, and she did, but did not take her eyes away from his rumpled figure, which kept apace, back and forth, back and forth, until she began to rise—"No, do—do sit." He came and sat too, as though to cement the request, across from her with the light coming through the window over her shoulder, gazing off into space. The deep plum lines were a bit red in patches, and he held a sad, drawn mien she did not like to dwell upon. He took a breath to speak, but was silent. Alice continued to wait, watching in increasing frustration the starts of phrases working their way out of him across his face, but passing only and never reaching her.

"Do you want something to drink?"

He shook his head _no_ in a distracted state, and Alice wondered if he had forgotten why they were there. Finally, he turned to her, and put both his hands palm down on the table between them.

"I don't—" said the Hatter, and looked from his hands to her. "I don't tell secrets very often, for I am very bad at it; as a consequence I... have a great many stacked up but little experience to communicate them, and so you may stop me if... if this is not to your satisfaction." His voice was so soft and detached, almost glazed; it was the longest speech he had made to her in some time.

"You don't have to if you don't want to," she urged, but looked at him anyway and bit her lip.

"No, it's—" and he trailed off. Alice sat motionless, letting this wash over her and looking into the pale eyes that were not looking at her.

"It isn't for me, I know," she said, folding her hands beneath her knees. "But I couldn't help it, and I am sorry for that." He gave that odd reflexive smile that was no smile at all, like a tic, and said,

"You can't help your curiosity any more than I can help being a bit… flattered by it."

Alice couldn't think of a response to that, and he took it as a sign of assent before slowly plucking at his fingertips, sliding off and setting his gloves aside; finally he held out his bare palms between them.

And there they were. His very hands.

The Hatter kept them lightly skimmed above the tabletop; the knuckles twitched slightly in the silence.

Hands are such useful reflections of their owners. From them we decipher attributes of gender, we praise and accuse the bearers of reverence or neglect, assign personality traits, guess as to one's profession, and even speculate upon the future. We may look at a pair of petite hands, powdery and smooth like a tea cake, and name their owner a coddling young lady. Another pair with veins like rivulets straining between ligaments and bones may belong to a strapping farmhand, tools to bale hay and chop firewood. Alice stared at the hands before her for a rather long pause, during which the man attached to them began to fidget and grow awkward.

"Is it strange to see them? I never look at them. Well, and... now you know... But… I confess I cannot tell your reaction when you are so still like this." He was waiting somewhat anxiously for her assessment, and Alice waited a few breaths to tell him.

"They are—" But she could not finish, and he took it as loathing, hid them in fists, curled them back in toward himself, and she reached for them, but they sunk past the table's edge. "Let me see them," she went on in an even voice.

He replied, "Do they frighten you?"

Alice looked him directly in the eye and said, "No; should they?" The Hatter lifted them as the fingers began to knock and turn again, quivering and hooking at the joints, his expression divorced from their alien flux.

"You take yourself as a prudent and reasonable young woman—I suppose you ought to be afraid, but then again I suppose you mightn't be, as many things as you have seen in this world."

Alice rose and stepped around the table to sit nearer; the fingers uncurled and began to relax, but his shoulders went tense.

"Why should I be afraid of them?" she murmured, a tight feeling in her chest making her sit very straight. He blinked, but Alice was sure of her opinion.

In the dark of midnight she had known only that they made secret signs and gestures at her, their general nature unknowable beyond that; here in the daylight over her shoulder she might have recanted to say that they were a most startling set of fingers—though quite elegantly structured. True, they were articulate things, proportioned with the perfect scale of flesh, not too much knuckle or vein visible, the fingers not tapered, but square and shaped. Strikingly... beautiful was not the word. She wanted to say they had been crafted like a statue's, that they bore witness to the intelligence and goodness of their owner. She had never seen a finer set. The girl put her own on the table: newly working hands, yes, although she fancied they retained some small characteristic of being clean, delicate and well-attended, belonging to a young lady of privilege and good family. But here, next to his, her fingers seemed almost crooked and dark.

This was curious indeed, for young men, even the most careful wearers of gloves, do not go through life quite so particularly. There is some pride in having just a bit of wear, to prove that one has interests and pursuits. His fingers were very still now, nearly wrong in their frozen state; he was staring at them from behind quite intently. Slowly he turned his palms down and out of view, trusting them just enough, and then she could really see it. Palms have no freckles, but with the backs turned up, his coloring took on a distinct quality that made Alice feel rather cold where she was.

How strange the ends of those fingers, appearing before her bloodless and lost to sensitivity-not a morbid blue pallor but an unnatural, frightening _white_.

Skeletal, but fleshed and living, Alice wondered if they were rimy to the touch. Perhaps once he had dipped his fingers into a pot of white paint and never scrubbed it off; such a very great uneven contrast. And this was most obvious at about his second knuckle, where guttate droplets of fleshtone began appearing, mixed with the usual darker spots, until at the top of his hand proper the color seemed to have awoken, and remembered itself in full. It could have been dissolution of the pigments, nothing more than an imperfection. She reached for them, but they crawled back along the table again with a curious shudder, curling in on themselves, and she sat astonished at their self-start caution.

There was something primally startling in that, something in the juxtaposition between how they looked and what they did, that fine shape and the color that made her feel as though her stomach would jump if she glanced away for too long and then back again, as though looking on them for the first time. The Hatter had a look of the observer with an encroaching anxious horror at its edges, and Alice saw that it wasn't _him_, their deliberate fidgeting was remote and he was attached at their edges, no control over where they would go or what they would turn to look at, but there was no way fingers could see things without eyes, or at least she thought that was the case, when suddenly he clamped one hand with the other so hard that she heard his knuckle crack and watched his palms slowly turn red with the pressure.

Alice hesitated, and then said, "Can you put them back? I only want to look at them." He let go of them, ostensibly now tamed, and in an effort to be soothing Alice drew her fingertips over his to lightly brush out their methodical turning and flexing—coaxing them to relax, feeling out the natural creases; they lay back and his shoulders dropped. He breathed in, but she kept her eyes down.

"Does that hurt?"

"No," he said, very quietly, looking at her from the side; she could see him out the corner of her eye.

"How are you like this, the freckles are gone, and the color—" And then she realized what he had meant, and ran her thumb over the last pad of flesh, wondering how long it had been since he had felt someone else's fingers, how long they'd been covered up. "You _are_ an oddity, your fingerprints are so faint I can't even feel them." Alice turned them gingerly into the light, dipping her head closer to see that they had been stripped clean away, or were never there to begin with; she couldn't quite tell. Who is a man without fingerprints? she thought. Where does his identity lie when his hands are blank, and his mind plays tricks and games with him? Where is he bound up when he is uncertain of the loyalties of his _self_?

The slack fingers curled and swayed more smoothly, wakening in a stroke beneath hers; Alice felt the distinct drag of flesh, thin and hazy and hot.

"Well," she straightened back up and breathed deep, "I daresay they _are_ curious, but they quite suit you." But she regretted the offhand remark instantly, for the Hatter sighed one of those sighs that only emerge from a man in deep existential crisis, looking at her so miserably, with great concern, as though she didn't fully appreciation the revelation of damning new evidence. "They aren't ugly, you know," continued Alice in a low voice. But he kept looking down into them. "Is there something else?"

The Hatter stretched out one finger and briefly pressed it to her open hand, then pulled away, almost too fast, gauging her reaction.

"Did you feel that?"

She had.

"I did." Alice squinted at him. "Did you?" He was swirling the pad of his thumb against his forefinger experimentally.

"Maybe it—" He leaned on his elbow to gaze at her, inscrutable. "Isn't that uncomfortable?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean it doesn't hurt, it doesn't burn you."

"Burn me? Why should it burn me—" and here she nearly said _how on earth_, only she stopped, thinking better of it. She lightly brushed her hand against the one again and murmured, "They are quite warm, but you've had them covered for so long."

The Hatter did not remark on that, but looked at her sidelong, and continued the swirling motion.

Alice sat back against the chair, and as she looked over the ivory-solid fingers, considered the fact that he had been purposeful and calculating in this concealment. It had had such an unassuming, artless air that she was now halfway toward feeling ashamed of her own incuriosity about his behavior.

"Interesting," she heard him mutter. "I suppose," the Hatter said now, "I suppose, if I'm telling secrets, I ought to _try_ to be thorough about it." He palmed the dark table, swiped its surface and leaned forward to inspect it, eyebrows entilded, but Alice did not see what he saw there.

"Sit over there again," he went on, croaking. "Don't touch the table." Now he hovered both hands just over the flat surface, slowly rested them there, setting each finger down in an unbroken pianoplayer gesture, and then his expression went blank as though he were not there at all, but somewhere away, not even across the room, but far behind him, over his own shoulder.

It began soft and low in deep thrum, and when Alice realized that she was feeling it, she pressed her fists into her lap and kept them there, leaning hard away from the table's edge. Those hands were still, but the wood began to shift beneath him, increasing its tremble, trying to get away, frantic. The crockery hanging from the wall and in the cupboard began a high-pitched _clingering_ that rattled the door and floorboards, the bands of energy shuddering the whole cottage. Alice jumped upon hearing a door slam back on its hinges upstairs, nearly turned toward the groans from the stairs that squeaked like stripped nails, but kept her clenched pressure centered and her eyes on the Hatter.

The Hatter was there but not there, concentrating and mindlessly idle, and if he had turned a bit whiter or if the sunlight on him glowed a bit brighter, she would not have been surprised at all.

Out, this jagged vigor of energy radiated in an invisible ring, under and up and out. Alice twisted in the chair and clenched her fingers until the color drained; this broad flashing stroke was enough to make the whole room feel like a train was passing by on tracks built up the walls and over the roofline. Part of her wanted him to stop making so much noise and chaos, the rest of her wanted to see it all, see how far he could take it, watch for the end and see if there was an edge. Something was pounding on the front door, someone couldn't open it and get in for the latch bolted fast, but there was no one there.

It resonated right through her, vibrating in her bones, doubling over, oscillating back on itself. The cups and plates and the oil lamp and the curtains all juttered, then turned and heaved for the floor, smashing and cracking. She could see thin floats of ceramic powder in the wake of this thing. The table under them shied and reared, the oil lamp frolicked; in her mind, Alice leapt out yards to snatch the plates and the cups from freefall, and her hand nearly went for them on its own, threw the frenetic invisible arc back, but it was the oil lamp that truly caught her up—she jerked for the brass ring and walloped it down. She slapped her arm, elbow to wrist to fingertips onto the weltering table to stop its glassy twitching walk, the Hatter finally jolting out of his chair, pulling up his hands for the instant silent stillness, black streaks seared deep into the woodgrain.

There was a sour taste in the air along with the fat curls of smoke rising from the table, but the oil lamp was cracked windward of the Hatter and smoking itself out too, for all of her flash to salvage it.

"Mother of God," whispered Alice, sounding like a shout. He was shaking with every breath, shoulders rising, hands still up at gunpoint, his composure somewhere between sudden startlement and age-weary dismay at seeing the thick char marks and foamy grey splits crumbling the surface. She looked around; Alice could hear clods of snow sliding off the roof to land with a muffled _piff_ somewhere outside. The wreckage inside was not so bad as all the clanging and rumbling had made it seem, but several of the dishes were in pieces, while the boiler in the fireplace had dislodged itself just a bit from the pipe.

The lamp zipped and _sizzick_ed before sputtering out. He hooked one finger delicately round the handle and flicked it toward himself, slid off the hood, and pinched the wick between his fingertips. With a twist and a pluck, his hand came away and he set the crackling glass back over a healthy bright flame. Her eyes went very large at that, and he said,

"I could've incinerated the house, and you're impressed by a lamp." She breathed in and out a few times while he took a seat and inspected a fingernail, morose. Alice tried, in this moment of drifting silence, to think of something to say to him. It was to her as though it hadn't _quite_ happened, or she'd read it as a passage in a book, or heard about it secondhand, for it wasn't a very real thing at all, hadn't wriggled its way into her senses entirely. It arrested her from a very long way away, and she let the blank stillness sit with her before she understood that she _had_ felt something, she just hadn't quite let it in yet.

What he had done was thrilling, and it felt exciting to see something strange and impossible once more, especially something that he'd been hiding in plain sight through all their tea partying and other sprees. It was refreshing, invigorating, and this bloomed at the nape of her neck, stirred her. Alice felt her own animus awakening and shaking off the dust that had gathered with the ice, and thus inspired, was growing animated. She frothed an electric sense of terribly daring importance, of his letting her in on a delicious secret in the mechanics of the world, and of herself expanding in every little way.

"Come on," she said, and seized his wrist, launched them both at the stairs. He managed to scoop his gloves from the edge of the table, and they were clomping their way up when he fretted in a squirrelly way, holding his arms out at odd angles while he wrestled with the fingers,

"What are we doing? Where are we going?"

And Alice didn't even stop to let the fullness of triumph in her voice crown the moment,

"We're rejoining civilization."

She bundled him off to have a bath—"And I'm putting out the fire; you've got that well in hand, I think"—before she bustled to sweep and gather and collect and organize and not think at all, but stoke the sparkling effervescent haze that was making her chest warm, thumping sweet and clean. The girl had put the tie to a cloth parcel of cheese and cured beef and was just fluffing the last of the bedcushions by the time she heard him sloshing about, and when the door to the bath flew open and he appeared in the dressing gown, flush pink under his hair, Alice felt even more cheerful than she had before.

He opened his mouth and in an exasperated way was about to say "Where's—" but he stared off into space very hard before finishing the thought, looking so peculiarly as though there was someone standing behind her. Alice threw the pillow toward the headboard with a flourish and looked over her shoulder.

"What?"

He flashed a palm at her, squinting and looking first at the ceiling and then all around; he turned and began to track whatever had accosted him so with mistrust, as if he could see firefly spies on the ceiling. It wasn't until Alice found herself being jerked into the bathroom wardrobe that she began to suspect that something might actually be _suspect_; despite the frequency of their earlier conferences inside narrow and dark passageways, there had until now been no reason to hide inside of their own hideout.

There was a muffled scuffling downstairs, and the kitchen door opened.

Footsteps, slow and distinct, hammered back and forth across the floorboards below several times, and while in any other situation this might have caused her a great deal of panic, the truth was that Alice could not concentrate. Squeezed together in the wardrobe between shrouding layers of cloth and canvas, there was no room for two people, let alone hysteria, and so with her face up against where his dressing gown had just begun to split open, she felt two things in a precise order. The first, and most immediately noticeable, was that his heart was beating so hard that it made her cheek full vibrate and twinge. Secondary to all this was that the Hatter still damp from the bath and therefore quite warm, which combined with his bouncing pulse (which was regulating at odds with the footsteps-approaching-up-the-staircase, sounding for all as though he had two heartbeats) made her realize something in a larger sense, and that was that she could feel the curve of his collarbone, and the faint scratch of hair on his chest, and then the bathroom door opened.

Alice mashed her eyes shut and bit her lip, for his arms were wrapped around her so unyieldingly that her lungs started in a jolt, which only made him crush harder, and in those painful moments passing, Alice's pulse began to throb and wash in her ears, making him hotter and louder against her. How soon were the echoes she could hear in him, up through the feet in the wardrobe? She tried not to breathe, not to blink, not to twitch the smallest bits of herself lest he shudder. He had the slightest concave dip in his chest, and there had been in a similar kind of curve at the very top of his lip, and he smelled of lemons and sea air even though neither of those things was anywhere nearby. She tried to remember what a river smelled like and only got the memory of the word _Cherwell_ in someone else's voice, on someone else's lips, and he had been so deft, rolling his mouth across hers, plucking, and then Alice blinked because the Hatter let go of her, shifting her into the back, bending quietly forward and listening.

Silence, and her blood felt potent, overpowering to be back in her everywhere, new and weak in turn. She could still feel him, waiting out his insurance ahead, and Alice felt desperately thirsty and any number of other things, until at last the kitchen door opened and closed again. He gave it another minute and a half, slowly easing the cupboard doors forth, pressing into the hinges to keep them from squeaking. He was distracted and focused by the call of the room beyond and not at all by the numb buzzing she could feel prickling at her arms, which concerned her until she had the stupid idea that he hadn't felt it, yet it had been _tremendous_, and when they were standing in the middle of the room, the Hatter whispered,

"You're right, we need to leave."

Shifting back and forth on the landing in her woolen skirts and overcloak, Alice tried not to set off any squeaking, careful of descending into the kitchen alone. Here at the top of the stairs she could just see the table legs stumped, but not the surface where surely—surely—whoever had come in had seen the burn marks; she was impatient for him to finish dressing. He appeared, overcoat collar upturned, and took the parcel from her to fumble something else at her: Alice unrumpled the rough knitted mittens from the wool she'd been steadily ripping and vengefully shredding over her extended frustration. He had done the best he could with it; they were something, which was more than nothing, even though the cuffs weren't quite the same length, and the girl let them rest on her upturned palms a moment, mulling on the word _when_. Thus beholden and begloved, she did not look him in the face the whole way down the stairs or even outdoors, tacking hard against the other set of purpling footprints in the snow.

"No." The Hatter paused, already dusted in balled clumps of white up to his ankles, facing the vale.

"What d'you mean? It's this way best," she heard him say. Alice took great strides in her usual direction. "But there's _people_," yet she would be off for the barn, and he had no choice but to follow, because she had the cloth packet with food in hand again.

There was no movement at the nearest window in the farmhouse, but still Alice only opened the barn door enough for her shoulders, and the Hatter shrugged himself in to the warm snuffly barn smells and sounds.

"Well, that's good, then," her favorite cow's answer was easy, "Every girl needs an adventure, yes."

"But you'll be alright?" Alice spoke softly, smoothing the curls over the flat spot between the old girl's eyes. "They aren't terribly responsible people," and they both rolled their eyes a bit, "I don't want you to be in any trouble."

"Oh, dear," said the cow, and Alice could hear someone else smacking away at a clump of hay in broad amusement. "Dear me, girlie, we've all been here much longer than you've been here, and we'll be here long after, too. We get by in our way—that's how it is."

"You're sure?"

"Oh my yes," said another plump bovine voice.

"They forget us, but then, they've already forgotten you, too. We like it better anyway—they aren't natural conversationalists, not like you."

The cat landed on its trim little toes to sidle round the Hatter, eyeing him while he merely gazed with polite interest.

"So," it began in a voice full of insinuation. "You're off, then. Where are you going?"

"Somewhere else."

"Are you taking the train?" somebody interrupted. "Past the scratchy trees, there's a train, that's where I came from, the people talk about it when they come in for the season. It's a nice one, it's got loads of hay." The cat glanced over its haunch and said,

"Lean down, won't you? Not you—" this to the Hatter, who hadn't moved at all but looked as though he might dutifully oblige, and the cat's coat was warm and its purr a rattlebox cascade while it murmured something only for Alice.

She only nodded, looked around for one last time. The barn looked a stranger now with only a bit of light in the door and shadows she never usually saw. Alice rubbed behind the cow's ears and said, "You be good."

It was orange outside, just starting a bit off in the horizon, and Alice watched for shadows of footprints while the Hatter trailed her three behind even with his big wide steps, swiping his gaze to and fro. Walking faster made it harder to think, and when she was fizzy with a sudden homesickness there under the tilted ripening sky, Alice leaned into the still air and fought the drifts, a few tears sharpening on her cheeks.

The main problem with the train was obvious, and that was that it wasn't there. There was a railway, whoever had spoken of it was true, but it wasn't _there_, and the problem with being on the lam and having come very close to being discovered by _somebody_ was that one really couldn't la-dee-da about in the open wearing a dark cloak, for it hadn't much for blending in, and that was sort of the point of winter anyway. Feeling thus keenly a sense of leadership and renewed purpose, Alice maneuvered them among a stand of trees not much bigger around than she was, and watched for signs below. As soon as she could see the grey trilling puffs, Alice trenched in, ready to run, but hesitated just enough.

"What if it's too fast?"

She turned to catch his tree-shadowed profile, his expression at the end of a resolution.

"It's not; if we run, it's not."

He made the decision, grabbed it from her, grabbed her hand, and went.

It was a slow, ponderously-clicking train, and standing on a hilltop or even a platform she would have shrugged her shoulders at a silly notion of trying to catch one, but here near its roiling metal innards, the car flats higher than her forehead, it was an intimidating thought. Round the bend it swung and droned, no passenger bays or lovely diners with observation roofs but clack after clack of rust-shaded freight flowing on past. His head was going with them one by one, as though gesturing them on, when he suddenly chose and leaped, and then he was fifteen feet in front of her. He leaned out and forward. Alice ran, hating it for outstripping her so handily, the sludging thing, ripping the air out of her; she flung with a haphazard feebleness the tied-off bundle past his outstretched arm and reached, fell back, reached, hiked her skirts, reached, touched his fingertips, he leaned just as she flagged again, she looked right into his face and all those freckles and then he was damn near pulling her wrist out of her.

Winded, she hit the deck of the boxcar bearing down on her left shoulder, pitched slightly along with the Hatter side by side. He stood and swayed, heaved on the gate, Alice bleeding energy, flat against the cold flooring. She skinned her palm, stumbled a few feet and flumped backward into a pile of hay, borne up, passive. The Hatter dropped the found parcel by her hand and bowed in too, the itchiest of berths. Now there was this, and he was quiescent, gently curling in all over, white gloves normal. Now they were calmed with the rest of him, and the Hatter looked almost as he had beneath a tree in the break of summer, waxing retrograde. Alice realized that she had forgotten to know anything concrete about his hands, but she couldn't do anything about it now, she lay there too confounded and drained of mania, too lacking in curiosity.

As she went this way and that, rocking with the boxcar rack, she was a bit of everything and a lot of nobody just then.


	26. Chapter 26

Whatcha gonna do when you get out of jail?  
I'm gonna have some fun  
What do you consider fun?  
Fun, natural fun  
"Genius of Love," Tom Tom Club

* * *

They both listened to the clacking rails. The strumming tempo was off a hair, as though the car at the fore of this one was overloaded too much to the right. Alice could just see his outline, there on his back staring upward from among the hay. She couldn't sleep, she was far too awake, every little thing a distraction, and so instead pulled very hard on the door to get it to open just a little, and the girl watched the stars come and go from among the vaporous clouds. But they were cold and very far away despite glittering so prettily, and she swayed back over to the haystack as the car sank into a curve. Unfolding the cloth from her pocket and crumbling bits of cheese blindly, she lowered her voice to mask the awkwardness,

"Are you hungry?"

"Not especially." He didn't sound this way or that way emotionally, merely introspective.

"You haven't eaten in a while." And she might have let the whole thing go at that and continue working her way around the holes in the cheese, when the car turned again and the stars chanced to peer inside, giving her a dim blink of a glance at the strange smile he was smiling.

"It'll catch up with me," he said, for he had seen her looking.

"It won't be good," remarked Alice, rolling bits of curd between her fingertips, "What if we have to run to get away from the freightmen?"

"I agree," he said, and it did not sound so much like a realization as it did a correction, "But it will catch up with me, it is catching up with me, and there is nothing I can do for that, not now anyway."

"But you ate before. You can eat now." The car had lapsed back into darkness, and there was nothing to do but listen for the sound of him.

"That was for before."

"What's caught up with you?" this in a bit of exasperation, but more for the lengthiness of his point.

The Hatter paused a moment.

"The Idle Place."

"Your state of mind's caught up with you?"

"Who told you that?"

"One of the cows did," she replied. "It sounded a rather distressing way of passing time…" she trailed off tactfully.

"So you know," said the Hatter.

"Knowing isn't understanding, but yes."

He was silent again, and Alice dabbed folded the cloth back up around the food but did not tie it.

"You know, but you don't understand," she heard him repeat. He sat up, rustling the hay, apparently open to a discussion.

"She said people in there can't die, even without food and water, that all you're left with is what you've done wrong."

"That's true."

"How is that possible?"

"It's one of those odd queerer places." She could see in her mind's eye flipped portraits and floating lamps, chairs and disrighted mirrors and ferns, and behind them all the dirt and roots of a rabbity hole; it was not surprising at all that amid the usual unusualness of the Wonderland there should be spots of concentrated Outré. Far away and long ahead of them, the train's whistle hissed cold and high. "But that's only part of it—it's just as bad going in as it is to _leave_, because once you're out, all that lost time comes surging back, and you're hit with exhaustion and starvation." Alice thought back to the Hatter lying crosswise on the rotting four-poster for days and days.

"Then why not eat, if you're starving now?"

"You don't have enough food to sustain us both."

It was both the mildness in his tone and the idea of it that bade Alice sit back on her heels, surprised.

"How long will it last?"

"It depends on how long it was," he said. "I don't remember, I don't have any concept of time passing, it's all gone," he was agitated now, distressed.

"Where does this train go?" He did not reply. "You know, surely you know."

"This goes back to… the capital. I think."

"Anglantine, and you know it does."

"Who told you that?" the Hatter said, taken aback. An idea had taken hold in Alice's subconscious, and it occurred to her now to take better care in paying attention to the things the Hatter did _not_ say, if not to be right-out suspicious, though that seemed perhaps rude.

"The Queen of Clubs," she replied, and was close to launching into it, but then Alice didn't want to tell him at all, and rubbed the palms of her mittens together instead.

"You've been busy."

"I think you should eat. The capital has food, and I'm not hungry." She pushed the folded-up fodder toward the spot where she knew he was, could tell by the warm rings of air even without him talking. The Hatter sighed, and they were silent.

"I had resolved not to think of it," he said after a few tics, and now his voice sounded thick with bread, "It is perhaps better."

"You cannot _not_ think of it forever, surely you'd think of it immediately," Alice replied. She itched to ask him what the crown had seen fit to reprimand, so palpable that perhaps it was the dusty hay in her nose instead.

"What is this?"

"What's what?"

"This… salted something or other."

"Cured ham from earlier in the season—" and she was about to up and demand _some_thing from him, anything, when he said,

"I can't even see it," and Alice replied, almost a bit snippily,

"Light some of the hay for a torch."

There was a long time during which the Hatter did not even chew, until at last he talked in a flat voice.

"That would be dangerous indeed."

Alice felt her shame, and tried to mask it accordingly—"If you took care to hold it out, it wouldn't be."

The rails clicked beneath them so many times that she forgot to count, and it all started to sound the same, compounding the way her shoulders slumped.

"No," said the Hatter at last, and she had to lean forward to hear him, "Dangerous for _me_." She had not considered that, and it sat ill. "Solitude for thinking about one's wrongs is a dangerous thing. There is madness in that loneliness with no one there to correct or bolster you, and the unhappiness afterward, no matter how much comfort you come into."

He was inside his own self, and in the daylight perhaps it might not have shown through, but the sound of his voice held clear frustration. She heard him rise, and the Hatter went for the cattle door and pulled, threw it all the way back, opening them up to the night and loud cold. He stood silhouetted against the wavelength landscape rolling deep in the black, and Alice felt half-sure that he would jump from the way he was leaned out, looking down over the edge of the car, half-sure in the knowledge that he would not leave again, and sat perfectly still, letting bits of straw float away on the same wind that was whipping through his hair and coat.

Alice was beginning to lose feeling at the tip of her nose when he ground it closed again but for a hand's-width column of air feed, and there was overwhelming quiet for a moment, just before the clicking came back into focus.

In the end, they did not run from freightmen. The train whooshed out a great _khasss_ of steam and slowed into the station, but while Alice slipped from the cattle car and crouched by shadow's dim, the Hatter walked straight and as normally if he were crossing a street at midday, neither stumbling nor noticing sleeper and ballast underfoot. Down the holding past the engine she could see long stickly shapes of crane arms moving and clunking; the lateness of the hour did not feel like a goings-about for business, though she could hear a muffled _plug-plug-plug_ off in the distance.

The only thing to draw the Hatter up short was on the street corner, and only because Alice gave a panicked tug at his coat sleeve: the black group of figures standing near the wrought-iron handling by the wide steps projected an official sort of watch-eyedness.

"What—" he nearly said, but she mimed with a hand over her head, and he clapped his own onto his white hair, for it glowed in the hazy edge of lamplight. He stepped back, and to her surprise, looked astonished, as though he had forgot his bare-headedness entirely, and then he peered round the shop window's edge to get a better gawk at them, assessing and comparing old knowledge. "Hmm," he murmured, and then he darted; she only looked to follow. Alice was well thankful that he knew back passages and alleyways with confidence; she had but to step lightly in his ghosting wake and hold fast to the corners, and soon he had opened a side door, and they were in a wooden-sounding room with a peculiar arrangement of smells. The close nasal oldness of dust, an acrid taste of chemicals: his hat shop.

Down the few steps and into the passage toward his house, he shoved her before him and practically pushed her the entire way, one hand flat against the small of her back.

He lit a candle and its light instantly went to the blue handprint at the join in the basement wall, he held it all around, and then turned to see Alice standing quietly at the back archway.

"Your hat is over there," she said, tilting her head in the direction of the worktable. The man edged toward it, giving her a look that brushed up against both keen interest and the breath of suspicion.

"Useful curiosity on a night like this," he said, and set the candle near the goldfish bowl, which had a definite lack thereof.

The Hatter looked at his hat on the dress form, and the hat looked sightlessly back at him. Dumb and immobile as it was, he still lifted it gently upward with both hands and beheld it, brushed the layer of dust that had settled atop it, adjusted the price, gave a quiet sigh of satisfaction. It seemed a moment for privacy, and Alice turned to the task of digging through her cloak pockets to relieve all the uselessness she had collected. The chunk of blue glass, the center matryoshka, and the other things she dropped all onto a side table, but when her little fingers came over the lock of hair tied at its edge, the loop of yarn, and the hammer, she was glad her back was to him, and left them to sink secreted.

He would not have noticed either way, for it was with the air of expectant brightness that the Hatter had tripped up the stairs three at a time and disappeared to commune with his old abode. Alice thought upon how nice it would be to have a hot bath, and the sudden remembrance of where she was jerked her toward the steps like a doll on a string, going to tell him—

But she met with the now-descending Hatter, hat still in hand, looking distantly stunned.

"We can't go up and out," he said in a curious tone of voice, "Not with those people, anyway."

She stared.

"_What_ people?"

"There's people."

"_People_, there's people? Upstairs?"

"It's a watch guard or something; not any great production, but we must be under surveillance—those men on the corner were Crown Guard, and there are more dirigibles than usual; something's afoot around here, and I imagine we might be the bugs they're out to quash."

"Did they follow us here?"

"I only saw a light outside, and there were voices."

Alice dropped her voice, self-conscious of her own presence in the house. "Did they get in?"

He shrugged, made a bizarre face.

"Well, what are we going to do?"

The Hatter leaned into the staircase wall and looked down the couple of steps at her.

"We have to leave again."

She dithered, creaking on the stairs, and let him past, where he sifted through lengths of pipe, half-woven baskets, and glass vials of vile-looking stuff, searching and clinking. After several minutes of this, Alice descended too, to perch at the edge of a chair where several pairs of spats had begun to breed.

Alice had nodded off, and awoke to find him standing in front of a slice of looking glass over the mantel. The Hatter was running a hand through his thick white waves, preparing to crown himself, settling the outmoded chapeau atop his bean like a flag at a summit's peak.

"May I ask you something?" It was a sudden urge more than process of thought that drove her desire for an answer.

"Hmm?" He smoothed a finger over an eyebrow and shifted his grip on the brim for the umpteenth time.

Alice squinted in the dim light. "Why do you keep a sign in your hat for ten shillings sixpence when the currency here isn't pound sterling?"

The Hatter turned the thing over in his hand to view the scripted tag jammed into the crown ribbon, and his smile was nostalgic.

"It's my premier favorite."

"But the price tag implies that you're wanting to sell it, and for a good command, too."

"No one'd recognize the price." He gazed at her evenly out of the mirror, a touch of amusement at the corners of his eyes. "So no one's ever asked to purchase, and I get to keep on wearing it. It is a stand-out example of my work, and I'm loath to give it up—my appreciation is the better gain." She had to admit that his logic was sound.

"And the tag?"

"It would look odd without it, don't you think?" His flourish was one smooth curve: twisted his elbow and gave a snap of the wrist to pop it onto his head, then turned to her, triumphant. He did look his old self again, bumptious and fruity for aught that meant in a basement. She almost didn't speak, but it slipped out of her and grabbed him by the collar.

"Wait," she called, scrambling up from over her numb legs as he went toward the arched passageway, "What if someone stops us? It's the most obvious thing about you."

He touched the brim briefly, then took it down and crumpled slightly.

"I only just got it back," she heard him say, plaintive. Alice went over to him; she disliked with a new vehemence being the common sensical source of his personal tragedies.

"We'll put it someplace safe," she offered to be soothing, "Where no one would look."

And so, standing before the gaping hole that the door in the tree made in the forest beyond the city streets, Alice did her best to balm the wound of his brief reunion.

"It's your favorite hat," she repeated him in affirmance, and he nodded, his back to her. It was like making a eulogy. "Is it the first one you ever made?"

"Oh, _no_," he said, "No no no, it takes time to perfect the craft—this is the certainly not the first, though it is by far the best." He turned slightly, holding it so that she could see the fabric's sheen, and she drew nearer. "Beaver felt," he said in a softer tone. "I lost track of how many times I had to boil and pummel it, and to dye it—" He sighed, deep and brooding.

"It is a lovely hat," replied Alice, and she looked up at his profile. Her eyes were threatening to sew themselves shut she wanted sleep so badly. "We'll find it again." He swung it twice, gave it a soft toss, and closed the door with a brush of his hand before notching a minor 'x' into the bark. It all seemed so _désinvolte_, terse and ossified by her dashing of his yen. But it was the better thing not to have it, and better still not to have it in a house surveilled.

They had not got too far deeper into the greenery of the forest at all when Alice's questions ached anew to be asked.

"Where are we going?"

"Far, but not far." He was paces ahead of her and did not turn his chin to answer; she fancied he had a plan of _some _sort, and wished he would hurry up and be himself again; no, that wasn't it—she kept knocking him to the ground each time he tried to rise, and Alice was on the windward side of feeling so guilty and so sorry for herself that she might have cried, only he unlatched another tree, and held it open for her, just now looking back at her over his shoulder.

It is not a terribly vast distance between Anglantine and Etlucindes, and really shouldn't be an epic trek, only the best travel companies would have you believe otherwise, that the smartest and really the _best_ way to go is by fur-lined sleigh through the snow and by modish, but assuredly sophisticated, caravan in summer. Some people believe this; others arrive by a sleek white passenger train with four dining cars, a plush private berth car with a velveted four-poster, several sleepers for the servants, and a glass observation deck for viewing the better constellations—all of which very much require a slow journey if one is to fully luxuriate in one's own grand entrance. And certainly, one must. For Etlucindes has the best of everything, and everything must be the best for Etlucindes.

The journey becomes even shorter by doors, especially in the middle of the night with no one to ask what on earth you are on about. But stack these advantages against the illness of defeat, against unshod paths and a lack of sleep stemming from rancid anxiety, and the resulting mixture is one of distinct amnesia shot through with the strange taste of half-forgotten anger. The feeling is there, the energy returns, and one has no idea what hours ago was enough to inspire such germs of vexation.

Alice did not remember how she reached the top of the Grand Palais Hotel, and only had half a fast-fading memory of what she had told the concierge (and what she had told him was what the barn cat had told her in whispered confidence—the names of the Farmer and His Wife, who held, so conveniently that it was making her start to giggle, permanent reserve over the top-floor suite and surely would not mind if somebody actually used the blessed place rather than let it go to so much waste), but here she was, on a couchette the size of a canal boat, dressed in someone else's shabby clothes, so delirious that she didn't even know what sort of room it was.

It was too hilarious to not laugh about, really, and Alice would have continued but for the knock at the door which made her gasp and stare somewhat fishily at the ceiling, a strange, chuckled "_What?_" escaping from her, really more a reply to a fantastical untold story than to a knock at the door, but there it was. It would be strange for the Hatter to knock, and she gave a momentary space for thought to whether the hotelier was there to chuck her to the front gates, but it was neither of these two; it was a young woman with a strange face and a strange accent, who by degrees shuttled pliable Alice to an echoing inner terraced room, pushed the blonde charge weaving and bobbing somewhat around the sunken hotpool, marveling at the skylights.

Our heroine was not surprised, or even perplexed, when she looked around herself, blinked, and realized she was quite naked altogether. It seemed the thing to be for some reason, though, and Alice merely lifted her eyebrows and watched with mild interest the oblique repeating water lily pattern in the wall beyond breathe in and out by contractions.

"_Relaaax_," was the only thing the tellak would say, and pushed down on the girl's shoulders to get her to let go.

She had a strange dream, a dream that everything smelled of sweet almonds, that someone's fingers delved into her calves, someone stretched too hard and too deep into her back but she desperately needed it and never said a word, that someone's gentle and resolute palms pressed straight down on her breastbone just so, that her eyes in answer had gone wide and soft, her head lolled at this deep silent restoration. Sweet sand on her mouth, hands to the elbows dipped in warm weight and left to percolate and steam; Alice bent and swayed and dozed in the hot waters. Someone's hands were in her hair, combing through it soft and straight, holding it out and letting it fall in a curtain-drape, she felt every burst of flash in her scalp. Her toes were freed from the cracked brown leather boots, they stung and the flesh and nerves sang, Alice's hands were so warm, she had never been so warm or pleasurably relaxed in her entire existence.

Upon awakening she found herself wrapped in a cashmere kaftan, and standing over her bedside holding a cup and saucer was the Hatter, looking freshly slumbered and crisply laundered himself. He tilted his head to the side to better meet her gaze; she smelled sweet and nutty, her new braid essed out onto the pillow beside her like water, she molded to the bedclothes and tried to imagine what she looked like in the picture in his head at that very moment.

"Hullo," she said in a chummy sleepy way, breathing deep and feeling all around her a soft pile. She could hardly move for having been handily formed anew by such thorough means, and chuckled lush, just once, at how well she took to it, at how nice it was to have back again a Hatter with his tea.

"Well, well," he replied in almost avuncular approval, then sipped as Alice clenched every muscle in lieu of performing an actual stretch, the mattress creaking out the intensity of her enjoyment for her. She sat up, and with her the mile-high duvet folded into itself and collapsed like peaks on whipped cream. "Enjoy yourself?" and this was followed by another raise of the teacup, but this time accompanied by a subtle assessment over the edge.

"Very much so," and she flopped her arms onto the coverlet to mash the air out of it completely, but it squashed and jumped away from her, ballooned at the other side of the bed to hiss and crinkle. There was something hinting in his tone, something he didn't quite want to point out but needed assurance of. Alice looked at him directly and thought he seemed a bit ruddy in the cheek; she would feel the bath's undoing effects for days, very probably. "Thank you," she said, genuine.

"You're welcome," came his too-quiet response back in the tannins.

"I'm sorry."

"It's not for you to be sorry about."

They were lounging on the divans opposite from each other, his saucer migrating in a lazy slide toward the back of the cushion, his leg crossed one over the other in smart pinstripe trousers, Alice draped cozily among eleven or so cushions, a warm and content _grande odalisque_, the triangles of her embroidered velvet slippers poking out from under the fabric.

This was a strange sitting room—the fireplace humming while the broad high windows stood permanently open, a brisk contrast and specific point where the two airs blent. A broad selection of samovars on a pushcart had been brought up during her convalescence, she was pleased to see, and their gleaming metal sides reflected the burn and white marble of the buildings across the street.

"I know, but—I could have come sooner. I m—" and there Alice stopped, for this was a very tricky word, and it took her time to twist it out of her throat so that it held its shape and did not lame or weaken as to embarrass them both. "I missed you." But it toppled and cascaded in a long arc instead, bounced along and dilated the two of them.

"Oh." He did sound surprised. "It never was my intent to distress you so," he said, folding his hands awkwardly—and indeed, he himself looked in the afternoon light and fire somewhat disconcerted. "You are as excellent a friend as anybody could hope for."

Alice rubbed her eye with the cuff of her robe and felt warm and tired, relaxed.

"I miss..." Alice pursed her lips. "I miss the tea party. I miss having fun, and how easy everything was. I miss your stupid puns," and she laughed, "You are consumed by some great worry, and I am not sure whether you mean to shield me from it, or to deceive me. It is as though you are possessed of two characters, in mortal struggle with each other."

He rose and stood before the window looking down into the street, hands in pockets.

"We all have our faces, some we show at the door, some we keep on when it's light."

"Your strangeness I can accept; I should think I'd gone clean off the deep end if I found you tempered and even one day, but really, it's almost an unkindness to keep me so far removed." Alice had sunk belly first into the pillows, curling in and nearly talking to herself.

The Hatter scrunched up his mouth and wrinkled his nose, thoughtful.

"Can you promise me something?" She could, or she could at least try, and told him so. "There are things you don't want to tell me, I haven't missed that, surely you didn't think I would, and when things are aligned, we might have sit down at tea and have a nice talk, of this, of anything, if you like." She simply looked at his back, the young man standing in the window, but upon arighting caught him scrubbing a hand through his hair, chin down, and she spoke seriously, caught between the hissing blast of flame and a shiver of cool.

"It would be easier knowing that you were yourself again, or at least close to it." He turned toward her and put his head to the side, considering Alice for a moment.

"When I was much younger—much, much younger—I went camping, as people do. It doesn't matter why, or where, only that we were out in tents in the wilderness, and the fire was not far. It illuminated the cloth nearest my bedroll, casting everything into a flickering shadow, and I watched it for some time—the trees and their branches, rolling hills of... lavender or something, etc. etc. I awoke some time later and perceived a set of shadows there, not my companions, but little figures with neat hands and chattering voices.

"I lay still, listening to them," he continued, gazing off long, "And presently they grew bold, for no one arose to send them away. I was not terribly alarmed, mind you, for there are all manner of creatures in the forest, and they are certainly welcome to it, but after a spell I grew rather concerned, in a flat sort of way, as these beings did not move on, but lingered there, circling the fire, chanting, looking to steal our food. More and more, they brushed past, and I could nearly see the wild eyes through the cloth, their voices louder and louder to one another, scrapping, fighting, screaming—and I swung out with the end of my fist, bowling over the one insolent enough to come scrabbling against my wall. They scattered, shrieking a war cry, and I soon fell back asleep." That seemed to be the closer. Alice cast her mind back to search for a moral.

"And that's the story of the time I punched a raccoon in the face," said the Hatter breezily, the voice she recognized having come back into him over the course of his tale.

"You are still in there," she said with a wistful smile.

"No indeed, one could scarcely blot out something that burns through one's eyelids." He drew near the fire and held out his palms, fire on fire, she thought. "I suppose everybody has got their second self. You know how Byronic heroes are always hiding goodness and decency and... other irritating characteristics, with their surly-burliness, yes? Slapping the governess about, and driving hell over the moors in a thunderstorm, who knows. Perhaps the rightest way to hide a bit of darkness is to flood the room with light from every direction." He scratched at the outer round of his ear.

"But even a roomful of the brightest lamps will produce overlapping little shadows," replied she. "You would hardly be able to even look, let alone see the true and worthy character, for so much distraction."

"Yes, that is true," remarked her companion, sounding as though he could breathe easier and relax in dreamy repose, "Oh, well."


	27. Chapter 27

Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.  
William Dement

[O]nce she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.  
_Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_

* * *

_Alice was running through a tall and shady hedge maze, and though it was only twilight, pale droplets of fireflies flickered code to one another from the indigo shadows; she went laughing with a giddy openness the whole way. Shouldering the leaves and peering round corners, she had to gently bite her knuckles to keep from making too much sound, for he was very, _very_ tricky, darting and shifting with the blotches of darkness, but she could hear him chuckling sometimes, and that was his flaw._

_ He meant no malice, certainly no harm, but there is something in being chased that creates its own self-fulfilling prophecy. The urgent mood, even in a game, amplifies in such an inevitable way—one runs and the other runs faster, end over end, until everybody falls down from exhaustion._

_ This time he played the minotaur, or perhaps Pan. This itself wasn't really peculiar, she just couldn't tell if the strange nubs poking up out of his glowing mop of hair were real horns or not; they certainly weren't box twigs he'd collected after crashing through false walls of shrubbery. He had horns, and he was chasing her through a hedge maze, and it was great fun: there are subtle truths even in dreams, but there is so little point in their notice._

_ Her flat slippers smacked slate now with a juicy echo as the path opened onto a narrow sunken garden. Alice did not stop to appreciate the snug little bench, nor did the graveled paths that spun backwards around whole roods of tiger lilies and violets catch her eye. She kept going, throwing one glance over her shoulder to see him slide with a loud _shhhhkt_ to a stop at the edge of the stone tile, and just as she disappeared Alice thought he looked determined yet perplexed, which was a funny crossroad._

_ The maze returned at the opposite end of the garden, and she went around in a large circle where the edges of the hedges were square, twisting and turning, _guaranteeing_ she'd lose him, he'd never find her like this. She turned, paused at a juncture, doubled-back, and when Alice had skipped past an alcove and turned up a long hallway, she saw something very odd at the end, where there was another wall and the path essentially became a large uppercase T, that thumped her up the middle so hard she went white cold: something flipped and slid around the shuddering leaves, unsnagging itself as it went._

_ There was someone else in the hedges._

_ It wasn't him; she had only seen it for a moment, a whipflash of color quite unlike what he'd been wearing. It had seemed a point of order, that there should be no one else, this scenario allowed for no others, and yet now it stood entirely factual: someone else was here. How curious, and just a touch ominous. Alice crunched along the path, carefully stolid in case whoever had just turned the corner was waiting to pounce and frighten her. _

_ But there was no one, just another stretch of greenery, and capping it a wall of ivy. She could hear a pattering of feet, very far away or very close at hand, and she fled without thinking, aiming nearer the mossier cobblestones to not give herself away. The sky overhead seemed to be expanding, and Alice stepped close to the bushes, in the shade and hardly seeing through her own frantic glances, trying not to think about how the wall at her back was little more than sheared plant growth-easy to reach through with clawing fingers and fists. _

_ She squinted, swallowed, and kept going, down a forking garden path, past the edge of a floating wall, through a curlicued dead end and back out, speeding up, there was a hairsbreadth second of blonde hair just ahead of her, and gone, and there it was again, the something she had seen was dress fabric, it drew itself round the corner at the last moment every time she came on the scene, until at last Alice reached the very center of the hedge maze, a topiary garden with a glass-top ironwork gazebo and fountain made of Poseidon's court rising out of the ocean in a great spray._

_ Whilst she took in this scene the Hatter came up, blustering into her in a rather blatant display of triumph. When he saw, however, that his victory had been superseded and the spirits and fun all gone out of their game, Alice tried to explain what she had seen, but the words didn't quite come out, and she stood just looking at him. He tilted his horns back and forth, spilling his supple waves of hair over them while contemplating the infinite with an agreeable sort of expression._

_ Alice, still looking at the velvet finish and thinking they were not bigger than her finger, plucked his elbow with a hardly-repressed smile and watched the Hatter leap forward, giving a soft "ah-ha!", through and between green silhouettes of waltzing couples, and then off back into the leaves over leaves at the other end. She waited to give him a proper head start, and just before she trod the step, Alice glanced over her shoulder._

"Let's go out," said the Hatter in a rich and plummy tone, plunking his cup and saucer somewhat carelessly next to him onto the settee. "This place is perfectly lovely."

The nice thing about the Grand Palais Hotel was not only its opulence and general feel of being the sort of place in which to take the cure, but the multitudes of odd asides and inglenooks Alice found once she grew stale of sighing before the fire and decided to toodle about. This delightful aspect owed its key element to the mass overgrowth of tropical ferns and broad-leafed plants parked in every open space, giving off a distinct feel of the exotic and the notion that perhaps the owners had forgot to put up walls where needed and thought greenery, that's just the thing.

She rather liked the place.

There was a genuine waterfall if one got lost and listened for the rushing sound right about where the parquetry bit off into granite tile—no one was there, _nothing_ was there, in fact, and she stood watching mandarin ducks paddle round, inspecting imperiously this ambassador to their stately dominion. The lobby had a cylinder aquarium about the size of a house, with spiny fish, six-legged blue things, and other beings of the deep twiddling their appendages on the hulk of rock vaguely shadowed within. She climbed the iron-wrought circular staircase with proper balance, but the best part of _that_ was standing on the ground floor, right beneath a domed skylight shaped like an eye, and when the sun was up and the sky was blue Alice looked into it, and it looked back down into her.

Sometimes it was silent, and she stood where no one could see her, looking for patterns in the curious wallpaper, a unique diagonal hatching that could only have been done by a patient hand. Past the concierge desk and through a reddish door with a stained glass panel she found passage to a Roman courtyard, where a narrow reflecting pool was flanked by two white ionic columns, supporting nothing, just there, waiting. Elegant furniture arrangements she found beneath staircase landings, but they were usually empty, and rather than seeming like filler, she found them strangely interesting, as though they had a secret history written in pencil on their undersides, perhaps taken down in six words or less. Her bedroom had pale green silk on the walls and over her bedside candle there fitted a globe of stained glass that threw lacy scripts and loops like a mandala onto the wall behind her headboard; the chandelier in her sitting room was held up by a silk rope that she could untie from the wall and gently lower to change out the glass-cupped candles.

Everything had detail. Everything could be observed.

It was tremendously beautiful, and she was growing just the least bit bored.

"Oh," she replied, surprised that he should mention it, considering their situation. "I wonder if it's a good idea, though."

"Oh, but don't you want to get out, go see things?" He stretched his arms at angles around him, bending his elbows and pulling as though to shake off dreaminess. Her fire ran hot and cozy, and he was barely flushed in the face, sitting near the open window as he was—though perhaps it was the confluence of temperature that had him in such a drowse. The Hatter finally slid down to lean his head against the divan back with a slight flop. Alice did not want to cause a scene and risk further penitence.

Still, if the white marble buildings she could see from the sitting room window were so lovely, then surely what was inside them was lovelier, and the people in them loveliest, and what lay beyond this set of buildings was likely, as the Hatter said, perfectly lovely.

They went ice skating.

The Hatter wore a fine hat, not too tall, not too big around or too wide a brim, and she was glad to see that bearing such subtlety on his person did not cause the poor man to droop and sigh with the unease that comes from being forced to give up one's personal hallmark; it covered enough of his eye-catching coif without being suspicious. Thus obscured and released into public, he continued this trajectory of cheerful languidity; Alice lost sight of the Hatter almost immediately after tightening the skate straps to her boots, and was alone in a small crowd for at least eight spins of the rink. She had not been on ice for a long time, but despite her togs, managed to cut an even keel, slicing through the dusted ice in graceful waves, shifting gently from one foot to the other, twisting full round and throwing one foot over in a wide arc, then beginning over again. Finally he came up at her in a too-close halt, having just stuffed his tea cup into an outer pocket.

"Come on," he said with an easy smile, and held out his hands, finally tossing the muff aside when she couldn't quite elect where to store it. Alice's elbows moved very slowly; she looked down at his gloves too long, and then his thumbs closed over her wrists; he pulled. It was easier to flow with his rhythm if she bent her knee enough to give their momentum room to work, and soon Alice felt it was enough to balance on one blade, the other foot raised to scrape along by the heel.

"You were right, it is nice to get out."

"Hmm?" His eyes had closed and he was standing as though perfectly still, coasting with kinetic backward motion, when his skates went into a divot and they both stumbled, Alice taking the brunt force of his hands clapping round her arms, but she was a steady girl and managed to salvage them both. "Oh," he said with genial humor upon looking round them at last when she had got them righted properly. "Ah." He took her arm rather loosely and they went on, side-by-side. "Sorry, what did you say?"

"How is your nose? Are you feeling any better?"

She watched him from below; tilted his profile down to look at her out of the side of his eye and relaxed into a broad contentedness, letting their arms fall to his side. "Wonderful," he said, chuckling. "Marvelous."

_ It was white in here, and he hated white—like this, anyway. He was sitting with his back wedged into the corner farthest from the door, not merely a physical manifestation of how deep he was in it, but also because he ached, and it was the only way he could breathe properly. Nothing was ever comfortable, though this was supposed to be better than the alternative. The Hatter didn't know, he couldn't remember if he knew what that was. It had been a long time he'd spent like this. But the white, it spread on and on, bright, yet flat and passive—spotless and pure, something he was supposed to aspire to, tolerable and placid. Sometimes he could see through the outside corner of his eye, just along the angles of the wall, fleeting colors and patterns, lines converging, reds and greys, spots and twisted amoebas. _

_ They all left before he could _see_ fast enough, though; they understood their own danger, and he let them—the Hatter and the colored patterns had an understanding that way. They'd run before they were forced out, and he'd keep his mouth shut. It was all very hush-hush, but he relished things like that. Secretly he was fascinated with the pattern of freckles that peeked out below the raw edge of his trouser—he always tucked his bare feet underneath himself whenever someone came in, certain that they would never know he had sixteen separate constellations spanning his right ankle to the smallest toe on his left foot, or that he could get them to change from a summer to a winter sky if he flexed his arches. _

_ White was so bland, yet sometimes he could feel it beginning to quelch and close in on him, the white of the room looming over him like a henge. It crept up past his legs and consumed his torso; he couldn't quite pull his chin away from it. It got in his eyes and he tried to blow on it and dash it away, but it fell again soon after, drifting and piling, and drove him to push his forehead against the wall to grind it back. _

_ The latch in the door was moving, and he curled his toes under in his rush to hide the constellations, sitting upright and very still, flush where the walls met in an overhead angle._

_ Rarely did the door open, and when it did, it was mostly people dressed in more white come to bother him and interrupt his counting the freckles up along his shins, which he had to do with great caution. On even rarer occasions there were other people, people he thought he recognized, but they did not speak to him the way he thought they ought to have, which was a great nuisance to everybody. Those people were not the people in white, but they tended toward that familiar colorway upon some apparent directive, choosing beige or whatever it was called._

_ The woman who entered and turned as though she were waiting for the person at the door to shut it was wearing a cloak that blent with the walls; he could barely see her until the door shut and clicked, because it was only then that she removed it and came into focus. Her dress underneath was blue—not pale foam atop the sea, not a frosted glacier, blue, a clear azure sky after the snow, cornflower, French blue, Wedgwood, a host of names that suddenly came to the crest of his lip unbidden. The Hatter, however, continued to gaze at her directly._

_ She did not immediately stride toward him, but stood politely at the door for a moment, apparently waiting for him to adjust to her presence, and when she did approach, it was smooth, unruffled by the state of him. The woman seated herself and arranged her skirts in a generous fan, plenty of blue for the looking._

_ "I've come to collect you," she said, right off. He fidgeted for a bit in lieu of an answer._

_ "You say that every time."_

_ "Have I been here before?"_

_ "You come here often, and you always say that, and just when I think it'll happen, I wake up and nothing's changed."_

_ The woman thought about this for a moment before removing one of her gloves to gently comb her fingers through his white locks, pouring it back._

_ "There… that must be a bother, having that in your face and you not able to do anything with it." They sat in silence. _

_ "She never does that," he said finally, and the room was so white right then that it nearly absorbed the words. _

_ "Mmm," said the woman, and he fancied it might have been the most demulcent sound he'd ever heard. "We'll undo this, and you can stretch out. It's lovely in the garden this time of year, and I don't imagine you'd want to miss it." She brushed her fingertips into his hair again, but aimlessly this time. _

_ "I'm not sure I want to."_

_ "That's not true."_

_ "I don't know _how_," and he shrugged, not quite a thrashing, but nonetheless he winced afterward. The woman sat back on her heels._

_ "You don't need me to save you, but I shall be glad to help you." He pulled his legs out and moved forward in a jerking motion. She reached behind him with both arms, set her cheek into his while she worked, and he could see past her shoulder a long trail of blue extending outward, bleeding over into the white at a huge perspective. When she sat back, he couldn't tell if she had gotten it or not. Carefully she pulled the too-long sleeves, but he was stuck; atrophied. "Oh dear," she said, inspecting him, "Are you frozen like that?"_

_ She undid his arm, her hand at his elbow and the other pressed against his palm through the sleeve with the ends sewn shut: wound and unwound his pocketed wrist, rocked his arm back and forth in an open arc, pushed it folding back inward. It stung and needled, he hadn't felt his hands in recent time, but it twinged up through his neck and a whole set of nerve endings awoke in a kind of painful euphoria. _

_ Later he lay buoyed and cushioned in the calm waters of the bathtub—he didn't need to look out the open window to see the garden in summer bloom, he knew it was there even with his eyes closed, it was so bright it lit up the walls. She was sitting on the bench outside with her elbow along the sill, sketching the hydrangea with a nub of charcoal—he could hear the soft scratching and knew she was right there. Sometimes she seemed to align with him, stack their thoughts atop one another and converge, and that was the best of all, he thought. The Hatter stretched out his arms in front of him, parallel to each other, and turned his palms up and then down, rolling in pleasure._

"Do you know what I've noticed most of all, though?" Alice said, turning and doing a doubletake to find that he was not just behind her as she'd thought. The Hatter was still over by the gallery doorway, bent over to inspect a painting of a beach party in winter, pinching his bottom lip and winding it between his fingers as it went slowly pink to red. She went back over to him; it wasn't a terribly interesting piece of art, as everyone was still done up in overcoats and dark bonnets—the sea roiled in the background and it was a rather somber affair, like a funeral for fresh oysters. He blinked into it, wide eyed and captivated.

"Hmm? Sorry, what?" The man turned to her and tilted his head to the side just so, still with his lip in hand. Alice glanced down at the pointed end of his large shoes and the matching dark socks, the way they contrasted with the herringbone pattern in the floor, as he began to rifle through his coat pocket for the rattling tea cup.

"Everyone here is at the forefront of their own private story," she told him. The Hatter sipped and spoke into his tea.

"How d'you mean?"

"Everyone is interesting, whether it's how they look or how they talk or act. Nobody sinks to the background, so nobody rises to the fore when everybody else is already there, though if they're all the same again, how does anybody distinguish themselves?" He spotted a window seat in an alcove directly behind a statue of a woman holding victorious a croquet mallet in one hand and a hedgehog over her head with the other, and steered them to it before it got poached off; the museum wasn't crowded, luckily.

"Like who?"

"At the hotel, say. There's a one-eyed porter who wears eyeglasses with one of the lenses painted black instead of a patch. Three women in the tearoom were all knitting the same hat, and none of them were sitting together, and none of them would even look at each other. There's _got_ to be something fascinating about people who live that sort of life. But it's not just _them_, it's everybody, or at least it seems that way."

The Hatter sipped his tea and gazed off, deep in thought.

"But lots of people are like that, wouldn't you say? Isn't everybody really interesting, when you parse them correctly? I think you're just seeing them in a different way, perhaps."

"Sorry, who are we talking about?" A broad-faced woman in a plum walking dress was leaning on her parasol stick and shaking her head at the person standing next to her; the decorative balls dangling from her large hat trembled and spun.

"Oh, but she's _such_ an amazing person in addition to being a skilled artist of so many disciplines," the other woman began gushing effusively to her companion in the statue's shadow, "You really _must_ meet her, she has such a warm heart and a kind spirit, she's _truly_, truly wonderful."

"Well, _people_," said Alice, "People like them, for instance—"

"What's she done?"

"Her _artwork_, dear," the second woman went on in a loud voice, "She's an _artist_; words don't do justice to who she is, what she says, what she does, _overall_. You know, proper training is all well and good, but she just _does_ this—"

Alice clucked her tongue, and lifting the Hatter at his elbow, strode to the opposite end of the room.

"Huh," he said, gesturing to the wall. There had been constructed a strange glass box jutting out just an inch or two around a rather obscene painting: a nude man and woman sat too-near one another on a rumpled bed, her fingers brushing the flesh of his wrist, his hand cupping and obscuring her breast, both blowsy and gazing into each other, intrigued and daring and just a hint smug. There was actually something in it, she thought, but Alice frowned.

"Is it valuable?"

"Shocking, quite shocking," said a young man from behind them, but he was murmuring it in an impressed way to the lady on his arm, who hushed him and looked about to see if the docents were paying attention.

"You aren't supposed to talk about the glassed ones," she said to Alice quietly, but kindly.

"Why not?"

"Some people just can't keep their rude opinions to themselves," replied the lady with a sage nod. And Alice watched the pair glide on to an open illustration, exclaiming at the line work and shading. She turned back to him to find the Hatter with the very tip of his nose brushing the glass, staring into it and holding his breath—but he was examining the folds in the backdrop fabric behind the pair, she thought. He might have been transfixed and even glassy-eyed at the presence of his own reflection for aught she knew. Thus so intent, she bent to examine the inscripted nameplate: _by Her Luminous Excellence, the Queen of Diamonds_, it read.

The Hatter was more expansive in the tearoom off the main boulevard where they both tucked in to bright red cake, and, upon Alice's preference, cups and cups of Darjeeling out of a pot the size of an ale tankard.

"You should try some of the ice wine," he was saying, pressing the back of his fork into the last smudge of white frosting and mulling over it, "It's quite the delicacy, I'm surprised they don't serve it in here. I bet the winery isn't far, though."

"Wine with ice in it?" Alice touched the lip of the creamer to her tea and watched the loose white cloud out across the surface.

"No, no," he chuckled, "They only harvest the grapes after they're frozen and stiff on the vine."

"They wouldn't get much, would they?"

"It's a small batch, and often nobody comes out with anything at all after a hard winter or desperate birds, but a good freeze makes the sweetest vintage."

"Oh, it's _sweet_, is it, how does it taste?"

"Fruity," said the Hatter, sipping and looking out the window. "Citrus, berry, bergamot. It changes and lingers, it tastes like a shiny dark red."

He wasn't up to anything the next day, waving her off with the assurance that he couldn't possibly contemplate anything beyond where he lounged in a sprawling way across the sofa, and so she wandered on her own until she came to a narrow tree-lined area between two white buildings, just smack right there, and it seemed promising; in she went.

Alice wasn't sure if it was an outdoor art exhibition or perhaps the public gardens, but very quickly the trees latticed out the sky and there began a series of panels, or screens, made of blond wood and linen, on either side of steep and moss-grown steps that angled down too fast. A just detectable movement like a solid wind turned into a very slow-looking river as she reached the bottom, heady and mysterious for all the steam coming off it. Rather curiously, this was an outdoor bath, attendants at hand. She turned toward the staircase to give the entrance a half-frown, contemplating going up all those stairs again. Then again, this was a holiday resort, and her feet were a bit chilly.

This kept happening, she had never been through so many treatments in such a short amount of time, and surely not so publicly, but there was something calming in the thick hazy air. Alice found herself undressed and sitting in an underwater stone cut-out at the deep bank's edge, a private alcove with a view onto the hot spring-fed waters. She was surrounded from behind by screens and a small linen hut, and it was so quiet that she had to be the only person alive. It wasn't so bad, really.

The spring temperature took some getting used to; it was a strange feeling, of water that never grew cold or faded against an iron tub. Hot, but not blistering—she shivered while submerged. Her hair curled with the eddying whirlpools that slipped around her arms; she sipped more tea—some local brew, it had been bitter at first but was greatly improving with time—and felt a soft safe undercurrent at her feet. The grass was crunchy behind the towel under her neck, but the great ancient forest on the opposite bank was misty, and she could pick out every shade of green and brown.

And then it began to snow.

She watched tufts of it fall out of the sky, and after the initial shock of it on her nose and cheeks, Alice was well in it. She leaned back to watch the grey turn into an ever-closer white, the break between the water surface and steam right at the center of her breast, the water lapping and the snow both giving her gooseflesh. It nearly stung after a while, being half cold and half hot. She looked down at herself, thought of the onion domes of St. Basil's, and then Alice felt terribly conspicuous, enough to dip low enough into the water that her collarbone disappeared. But after a while, her arms were so heavy and she let go of them, let them float up to the edge and fall, with snow falling on her face.

Alice felt loose and easy; the whole world was tucking itself around her, and she lifted the cup, tilted it briefly in a toast to the sky, and drank.

_She stood on the aging porch, looking out across the grey and yellow fields where the black poplar copse split the sky, and saw a strange patch of dingy gold slanting upward. She followed it, and out in the fields and the wind and nothingness she found the large wingback chair dragged from the cottage parlor, a long pair of legs extending from it, capped with familiar brogued shoes. Alice put her hand on the right wing, stepped over his leg so she stopped between his feet, and then she put her hand on the other wing and they looked at each other like that. _

_ She rather liked him, from the shining spots along his shoes, to the leisurely way he existed there in the chair with his head against the back, straight up to all those brown dots everywhere. She even liked his nose after all this time; it had a pleasing proportionality and a turned up way at the end full of youth, and the freckles there had always begun to crowd together as it wrinkled when he laughed. He was knocking the toes of his shoes against her boots lazily now, looking out behind her in the valley made hazy, and she couldn't remember why she was there, or how she'd got there._

_ "You alright?" asked Alice very quietly. And he just looked at her, not grinning or smiling like he used to, but with honesty and an open face said in an equally quiet voice,_ _ "Yeah." Keeping her hands upon the wings, Alice leaned in and pressed her lips carefully against his forehead, trailing the tip of her nose along as well. She moved to stand straight again, but he had one of her long curls that had got loose from the bun wrapped round his finger and was turning the end absently, not catching it or winding it, but just letting it spin, feeling the sensation against his bare hand. _

_ Still twirling it over and under between his fingers, he stared at her quite openly in the short space. Alice looked into the thin starburst lines in his pale aqua irises and decided she liked those too. It was only when he began to have the air of a private joke that she tilted her head in silent question._

_ "It wants cutting," he said, not looking at the strand. _

_ "You do it, and I'll shave your head while you're asleep," she said mock-viciously, and he grinned. But Alice took a length of string from her apron pocket, tied a ribbon above his fingertips, and with the silver shears she snipped it off, shining and golden. She looked at it there between her own fingers, and wondered if it was the last bit left of what she had once been when it first came out of her. She must be different now, and that difference would be new at her crown, wouldn't it? And she very nearly dropped it into his patient and contemplative palm, but just as it brushed the lines there, Alice stood up straight and took three skipping steps backward._

_ "You'd better get it before I throw it to the birds!" she cried, and just as she saw him come up out of the chair she turned, and ran wide open, her plain skirts flying above the boots, and they moved in great looping circles through the trees, screaming and laughing as she held the lock up high, teasing and ducking and dodging him as he let her keep away for the thrill. _

_ She hid behind one of the poplars at last, holding her breath and trying to be inconspicuous, peeking round the trunk._

_ "You looking for something?" he said right next to her before she screamed, more in excitement than terror. _

_ "How did you do that?" she said, for she was laughing too hard to say anything sensible._

_ "I'm everywhere," he said, chuckling and wiggling all his marble-tipped fingers at her spookily, the cut lock dangling between two of them._

They had been ambling up and down the pergola for some time, just enjoying the afternoon and doing nothing in particular. There wasn't any real point to it, except to see and be seen (or at least be acknowledged and quickly passed over), for the badminton season had not quite picked up, and there was no game in the courtyard at the center of the plaza. Across the street at high table they'd sucked down a pot of tea, and after that roast pork, goose pies, oyster stuffing (which the Hatter banished to Alice's far side of the table with a shudder and the evil eye), lemon-cheese tarts, seared asparagus, cream soup with sliced almonds, brown bread, white bread, salmon, trifle, quince jelly, walnut cake, currant teacake, curd tart, several more teas from the samovar cart, and also with the dessert a clear carafe of the dark red ice wine which Alice did have to admit was just the right shade of sweet and went down most refreshingly.

The Hatter had, between bites of a pudding, taken several deep breaths—_deep _breaths, filling up his lungs all the way that Alice was given pause he might accidentally inhale and choke on a plum. But if you have ever taken a meal so rich and thick and been so stuffed that in breathing your shoulders rise and you feel full of the world and truly at your best, you will know how the Hatter felt, and you will know the secret spot of jealousy in Alice that he could do such a thing.

Nevertheless, she was brimmed to the gills with it all, and happily went roaming in the gloaming with the Hatter; he was in a cheerful mood, for he bore an immensely satisfied smile, followed by a sigh of contentment every few steps. He even hummed a few bars of an overture from some opera Alice knew but couldn't call to mind the name of. It was a beautiful evening, and she bounced the end of her parasol in the mortar between the cobblestones, _strrrick, strrrick, strrrrick_. Pausing before a marble bench and turning, he was at the high point of a rather funny story about how he'd once been treed at a society garden party by some no-account viscount's yappy lap dog—or as he would have had her believe it, a hellbeast with slathering nine-inch fangs and a keen mind for a vendetta that seemed to center around the last leg of some roast beast, when Alice heard a strange sound. It was someone laughing, but she didn't recognize the laugh itself—it was the voice that was so familiar, and upon getting it into her head to turn and see who it was, she caught the look on the Hatter's face just before he hit the bench, and her mind moved in a strange way; Alice stood close up near his knee and bloomed open wide the parasol over her back.

Passing just behind them, and laughing, went arm in arm a startling pair indeed—it was the Count, in a brand new Chesterfield, and with him, one long thick rope of hair let down her back so the very end looped over in a curl, was the Duchess, swinging her parasol end over end. Alice could not hear the gist of the Count's jest, but she did tilt back with a sick dyspeptic mass in her stomach to peek around her linen shade and watch the other woman actually take a step as a hop-skip and look very pleasant and at her leisure in being on holiday in this, a holiday resort town.


	28. Chapter 28

Once you hate someone, everything they do is offensive.  
Internet wisdom

* * *

The Duchess sat at a vanity looking into her reflection. The glass cast a greyish tint over the room she could see in front of her, which was the room over her shoulder. Her hand was still on the brush she had been running over the surface of her whitish-blonde locks, freshening the long but narrow rope of hair down to its curlicued end. Those fingers were light on the engraved silver handle; she had become distracted by how strangely her nose and eyes and mouth all expanded together in a confused way after too long, morphing into someone she didn't know or had forgotten. It was funny how it could do that after she stared too long, and yet other times she could catch herself at the end of a long hallway in a distant mirror for just a split of a second, and wonder with startled surprise who that girl was. But it was always herself.

The Duchess had but one portrait of herself that she liked—there were many—one that she felt encapsulated her sense of self better than any other. The artist had painted sitting next to her before a large panel mirror and working from the silver surface rather than the breathing copy. There was something about the symmetry of her face that way.

"So," said the cultured voice from the other end of the room. She could just catch the tip of the Count's pointed shoe from where he'd slung his leg carelessly over the back of a sofa in an easy lounging way—he was always in this place or that, reclining, luxuriating, and always with an effortless pose, as though he was there to be studied and exemplified for his smooth social mores. The Count had a different opinion when she remarked on it, but that was another matter. He did not care about his reflection one way or the other, but she knew from having studied him that he was one of those rare people whose "fearful symmetry" graced them with precise sameness, inside the mirror or out.

She made her shoulders, her arm, and then her neck turn around in the chair to look at him directly, rather than by way of the looking glass. He arranged himself smoothly into a standing position and took twelve slinking steps toward her in his hard-bottomed shoes, heel to toe. They made a solid and reassuringly real sound against the floor, shoes that belonged to a man who did things and finished what he did with confidence, forever at his ease, natty and watchful, precise and significant. He couldn't help it if he'd tried.

"Are you really going to speak to her?" the Count went on. He was smiling faintly, sardonic and amused at some secret joke, and at first she wasn't quite sure she was in on it, but his expression didn't turn to the mocking, and she felt a rush of communal spirit between them both. The clipped, plummy velvet voice that came out of him belonged singularly to someone with his particular sort of nose, she decided; singularly as well were the flat seamless superiority of his brow or the half-lidded, thoroughly unimpressed way he gazed upon the world, surmising and predicting, or perhaps expertly palming any surprise he might have felt at curious turns of events.

"I suppose I have to," replied she as the Duchess turned back, then she did look at his reflection and made a textbook moue, at which he grinned companionably. Really she should have said she _ought_ to, but she really _had_ to, was the trouble. She liked that he found the whole thing amusing, somehow it gave her room to exaggerate, and she felt like being a bit ridiculous.

"Ah, Dutchy," he said, and took another drag on the cigarette cradled between his square-tipped fingers. "Dear old girl, what am I going to do with you."

"_Ohshutup_," she said, more an affectionate impression of an old actress they were both rather fond of, than anything with conviction. "I do wish you'd stop calling me that, you're the only person who does and it's very silly." She presented her wrist with a smooth grace and arched one eyebrow to look over the bracelet she'd been playing with.

"All of my friends call you that," he redirected airily. The Count had many friends, and the idea of a whole swath of people calling her by some nickname he'd designated for his own amusement seemed faintly hilarious, but the Duchess pressed on, her smudge of pride with a slight halo about it.

"Only because you make an example of it, and I can't say I know why."

"It's endearing," now he was looking at the glow beneath the ashen end, "And fun to say. Dutchy, Dutchy, Dutchy. Isn't it a nice word? I sometimes imagine myself shouting it into a crowd of people and all of them turning to look at me yelling _Dutchy_ and then all craning round to find some nonexistent fellow in clogs. Duchess is such a common long word." He described her this scene fairly often, changing minute details, acting it out as a one-man show, always with a smile.

"But it's a title," she said firmly, looking at him in the mirror with a certain gravity in her eye, and he shrugged placatingly; now there was an arch smirk meant only for himself.

"But tell me," he said as if she hadn't looked at him that way, "Are you going to speak to her, or keep up some elaborate charade of not recognizing her or something?"

"I don't know," she said in a thoughtful voice, and dug about noisily into the dressing table drawer, delving for her signet ring and brooch.

"Take her down screaming," he said, adjusting his cuffs. "I bet you'd do it, too, you're on the slight side, but a ringer probably." She stared at him in the mirror, and he expanded slightly. "I bet you are; probably tear out a few handfuls of hair or scratch out an eye." The Duchess worked her tongue around her back molars to stop herself laughing or even smiling a little. "And I would distract everybody, saying—'Oh look, it's that thing you all adore so singlemindedly,'" and he said this while pointing at a rather ugly lamp in the corner.

The Duchess assessed her mood at that moment, and decided that at this point in time she did not _like_ the Queen of Diamonds, which felt oddly incomplete.

"What _has_ she done to you, anyway?" He tilted his head at her in the mirror and she tried to remember which direction he was really going. "What is the truly inexcusable thing about her?" He sounded genuinely curious; the Duchess did not need long to consider.

"She's the _worst_ sort of person there is."

"A lady novelist?" he said, just to be contrary and random, looking at the ceiling. If she'd felt cleverer at that moment she might have grinned back at him and said something outdoing him funny; it did delight him modestly sometimes to spar with her in a humorous way, pretending as though he didn't know she had a whiff of a sense for comedy, and wasn't it quite shocking for a lady of her station to speak with such vulgarity?

"A hypocrite."

"A hypocrite," said the Count while still looking at the ceiling, and she thought she heard a hint of judgment mixed with his patience, "To be sure."

The lady at the mirror felt the irresistible impulse to launch into a recitation on her enmity but sensed what his response might be, and then came a helpless kind of anger or shame that she could neither articulate nor tease out for closer examination just then.

"When is the opening?" said the Duchess is a calm voice, powdering lightly at the space of throat down behind her ear.

"Seven," and he was frowning at an errant waistcoat thread, then growled, or _hmmed_, which might have been odd from anyone else, but not him.

"You'll stick with me?"

"Indeed, yes," plucking at a button, noting and planning. "I'll even send for you, we'll sup at _table d'hote_ before—it's short notice," he added shirtily at her look, and she spread her fingers out placatingly. "Ah, well, be well," he said in a kind, definitive voice, raising a flat palm in his familiar salutation, and stepped his solid steps out of the room.

Of an understanding they were not—she frequently laughed aloud when courtiers put the question to her, though there were attempts at a delicacy of phrasing. When she had first met the Count, indeed the stray thought that she would probably marry this man passed her mind. But their evolution skipped past any inkling of harmonious domesticity and tended to stray toward something like a performance, swinging often between teasing, sarcastic companionability, and lies put toward the increasingly complex fiction of their ludicrous entertainment. She had once suggested the notion that they were like siblings rival, but his veto had been swift and keen.

"_No_, no, us? A singularly dreadful thought, _believe me_," and looked halfway between outraged and amused. The Duchess did not agree, and kept the label in her mind, cataloging their cheap and usually brief or even halfhearted altercations to compare them to what she knew of the more glorious wars between brothers and sisters.

This platonic closeness aside, even if he had met her in the church, the Duchess reckoned a hypothetical union wouldn't last long.

"_Of course_ I've already worked out how I'd kill you, I've known for ages," he had exclaimed in mock indignation to her once, "My _God_, woman, are we the best of friends or not?"

Well, yes, _obviously_, that was only the truest fact there was, but what was the point of keeping a thing like that a secret? She'd made a dismissive hand gesture at the very idea.

"It would be an elaborate plot involving a thrice-forged will, an explosion at a buggy whip factory, a chase through the tunnels at a secret headquarters on a tropical archipelago, a half dozen tax dodges, and cracking the axle cap on your carriage," had been his answer, taking a long drag of cigarette and blowing pale blue rings, "Also a zeppelin chase, because I can't imagine you without one. This tableau would be drawn out in a series of adventures strung precariously together, diverting to their best advantage, and even then I'd probably wind up letting some footman simply break an ankle, but only because I'd want your thoughts on the whole affair. What's the point of murder if you can't reveal your ingenuity to them, or especially if they don't understand it at all? Having someone just go _oh, I say, blargh_ and be dead is so boring, I'd rather have them admire and appreciate all the work I've put into it."

None of these things were serious, but she ventured to believe that had they contracted in some unholy abomination of matrimony, one of them would wind up dead in the most affectionate way, perhaps even with a twinge of wistful regret, before the bridal tour was over; either that or he'd shrug and leave her at the altar so she could go arm in arm with his best man or something. He had made allusions to some pretty young lady now and again, anyway, and perhaps by now he was quasi-soon-to-be-engaged to her, but he did not seem to be in any great rush for it, and the Duchess was not a woman who concerned herself with these things beyond a customary politeness, anyway.

What she prized about the Count was that he was a loyal friend, and he played the piano well. In that first characteristic he took a stately pride, with noble honesty that he placed his friends very highly and wasn't one to leave an old egg or a dear crumpet in the lurch. He had sat at her bed during uncomfortable but not particularly dangerous illnesses, waved aside with warm conviction her melodramatic and hoarse declarations that she was dying, and entertained through hyperbolic national gossip or by reading aloud instruction manuals to various kitchen appliances with impressive gravitas whilst she was indisposed over a washbasin.

The Count's colorful skill at the piano was a more sinful pride or vanity, but he had every good reason to show off his talent and taste, which were pretty staggering. The Duchess thought of herself as a decently-informed connoisseur of the ivories, but he wended his way through contrapuntal concertos and variations before launching into the twisting trills and arpeggios of strange new etudes she had never heard. Her usual rooms at his place lay on the side of the house closest to the sitting room, and when her windows were open in the summer she could drift in and out of afternoon doze while he practiced.

She liked his house; it was big, and it sat on a peninsula sticking out onto a lake. It was tastefully decorated, wonderfully suited to hosting weekends in that grand tradition that people with large houses carry on so well, and anyway how else should they spend their time? She could not imagine him moving from room to room to ensure that they all got used up in equal measure; the Count did not seem to much care for his home, or much care about anything, sometimes, but she wondered how much that was real and how much he found the aristocratic life to be plodding and dull.

He had met her at the train station in Etlucindes, looking so aggressively, insolently bored despite, or perhaps with, the shuffle of intriguing faces and secret stories all around them, that she had drawn up a scooping handful of snow and stuffed it into one of his great-coat pockets right there. He had fended her off so she'd got several doses of the stuff at her collar in retaliation even with her umbrella open in time, but at least he had smiled the whole time to his house. After so many days sitting in posh white furniture and gazing out the windows all alone, she was glad to have to walk, but equally glad not to have to carry any luggage.

"Well, how was it?"

It had been the usual train ride up; too many cars, not enough clear nights for star-gazing beneath the observation glass, but one of her maids had brusquely nodded and left the berth when she'd said something she'd thought was funny, and the Count demanded to hear it now.

"No," said the Duchess, "Probably it wasn't very good after all." He stopped in the middle of the street and stared her down. "_Fine_," said the Duchess. "I told her I was going to look for my missing watch, but I could never find the time." She felt his half-lidded gaze keenly and nearly looked away until he chuckled, genuine, and the proper sense came back into her. The Count had a slow smile sometimes, one that creeped like molasses and deepened into satisfaction and approval, and he cast it down onto her now.

"The trouble with you and jokes," he replied as they turned a brick corner along the esplanade arm in arm, "Is that it takes a while for one to realize that you are joking when you _are_—something in the timbre of your voice that suggests you're still in that deathly serious mode you inhabit too closely." They passed loverly couples standing in intimate discourse under a vine-tangled lattice by the badminton courts, and he went on, "Don't fight it; you're too much like a deep-sea fisherman eager to chuck it all off and farm after years of nasty rows with the harbormaster."

She breathed in and waited.

"He'd seen too much wharfare for one lifetime," and she swatted at him with the back of her hand as he tripped a few steps forward, laughing.

Later that evening, she stood half-obscured by a heavy red drapery lined and trimmed with gold. Few threw recognizing glances her way outside of the capital, and certainly she did not expect it here, but there was better relish in these social gatherings if she could easily fade into the background—a spotlight could only heighten the need for a smooth expression and stern brow. The Duchess was glad the Count was well in high form this evening, and though she knew he probably longed to ease himself among the assembled courtiers and admirers to try to glean something interesting, he was content to settle in with her and wink ostentatiously as the crowd hushed.

"Friends, art lovers, and students of life," a woman's tremulous, starry-eyed voice was saying toward the front of the room, "I am so honored and grateful to have you all with me here, for tonight we recognize one of the great illustrators of our time as she unveils a new series. This is an historic moment in our culture, a moment perhaps some of us were born for. Do please help me to give a _proper_ welcome to an artist with a beautiful soul, Her Majesty the Queen of Diamonds—"

An impressed collective gasp, a cry punctuated by several girlish squeals, went up in the front rows over applause, as the woman herself appeared and mouthed _thank you, thank you_, while blushingly tilting her head this way and that, bent slightly at the waist, one hand turning in a shy wave. The Duchess could see the Count move into an ironic slouch against the archway and felt tremendously nervous for some reason. A muscle deep in her lower back had begun to ache and feel twisted, and her heart was beating too quickly for simply standing in a doorway.

"It's actually called a _collection, _I think," said the Queen when she could be heard, and the Duchess could feel her cheeks grow warm, "A series is something else—" The woman who had spoken first was flitting her hands at the Queen, apologizing profusely, "Oh, don't be silly! I hardly know what I'm talking about, don't listen to me go on!" Everybody laughed, and the Queen tucked a strand of hair behind one ear. "I am so happy to share this with you all, I know you've been waiting, and I have been a bit awful lately, but I've been busy, and we are nearing the off-season, which means the snow will be gone soon, but at least we'll get to enjoy our beautiful home without _too_ many tiresome tourists mucking about," and everybody laughed again, "It breaks my heart to think of my Etlucindes in anything but its most wonderful glory, and I think you all know that only happens when _real_ Etlucindians are here to _truly_ appreciate every secret facet of such paradise."

The Duchess mused on the condition of the Etlucindian treasury and wondered if the Count had winnowed out the yearly revenue of holidaygoers' spending from some acquainted bureaucrat, nearly missing the Queen's oration on the subject of her latest _collection_.

"It is always a huge pleasure to draw for fans, and it is my favorite thing to hear when I inspire others. I hope my artwork in some small way brings you happiness. Someone told me just the other day that they crave my artwork, that they felt what I do hits them deep inside, at the very core of them," the audience was murmuring among themselves, a few people were nodding, their expressions pious, and the Count put on a particularly devout face to mimic a grievous case near one of the forelights, "And I think most of you know that means so much to me, that these silly little pieces bring joy and light to someone out there who can do the art world far better justice than I. So without further ado," and someone pulled a curtain back as she stepped aside to more approving gasps and _oohs_ to reveal a series of stylized paintings. The Duchess stood on the balls of her feet to get a better look while the woman went on to describe her process for each; the Count rolled his eyes and flipped his cigarette end over end.

The Queen of Diamonds was famous for the cyclical nature of her widely popular portraiture—she ran through a series of muses and lingered on some, eventually cast others aside after a time. This opening would not be the introduction of anything new; it was the same pair she'd been portraying for ages now, the same man and the same woman, only in different outfits and with a slightly altered style, though whether it was for good or ill the Duchess couldn't say.

In quieter moments she could give the Queen some credit. She did take what could be rather jejune faces and put them in the most hum-drum of domestic arrangements (or obscene ones depending on her waxing tastes), but something in the line and shadow was appealing; there was something comforting about familiar characters redesigned and reimagined, as though one were looking through an endless series of windows capturing literal still lives.

But then there were paintings like the last—dark scenes of wrathful, hate-filled women with bleeding knives sliding between their articulate fingers, their plump faces twisted and clenched, grasping in white-knuckled fists the hair of decapitated former lovers, berserk dark burgundy drenching the end of the canvas. Noxious moments of consuming rage splattered those canvases.

"Of course, works like these," said the Queen of Diamonds, "Show that life can be ugly as well as beautiful. They are an expression, an examination—"

"But judge not—" murmured the Count near the Duchess' ear.

"Remarks may be submitted to the ministry of arts and culture," said Diamonds in rather a different tone of voice than what she had started with.

Midst the hazy thrum of conversation and public dissection of each scene's meaning, a hostess bore forth a customary token of gratitude for the Queen's having been so kind as to show her new pieces. Two members of the local arts and culture society stepped forward to present an award, and the Duchess watched a pantomimed scene begin to play out. The man on the left held out the brass object, while the one on the right explained to Her Majesty what it was for, despite having laden her with previous awards in openings past. Diamonds smiled and bowed prettily, and the question came about: to which painting was this award in regards? She could feel the Count suddenly perk up next to her and shift his weight forward. The gentleman with the bowtie gestured to the final bloodied print, and the chap with the tie pin pressed the award into the Queen's hand while gesturing to another design to praise its color palette but suggest that perhaps its angles would be better suited to a different perspective.

"What d'you mean?" she heard the Queen say rather indignantly. Tie Pin attempted to backpedal, but the damage was already done, and Diamonds continued, "You don't _have_ to look at it if you don't like it, you know, I certainly didn't _ask_ for your opinion."

"Well, it's just that…" she heard the man say before lapsing into splutters and looking to his fellow member for assistance. Of course he wasn't much help, for he said something along the lines that perhaps when Her Majesty had tried her hand at chiaro scuro more thoroughly, then in the _future_, the society might well—

The Queen of Diamonds seemed to consider the brass lump in her hand for a moment, then wound up and chucked it so hard that the man toppled backward into his comrade, both of them taking down the hostess with them like a trio of geese lobbed out of the sky by a stray engraved goblet. She stood like a column of fire, shouting at the top of her lungs, and the mood in the room churned. Quickly she was flanked by admirers alternately scolding the men and woman on the floor for upsetting Dear Majesty and cooing in Diamond's direction that it wasn't her fault, these people just didn't _appreciate _and _understand_ her the way _they_ did, taking her by the hand and attempting to coax her out of her tantrum.

"How utterly rude to assume that I wanted your criticism, and anyway, what do _you_ know," she said sternly and in a loud, clear voice, her hands akimbo and facing the crowd, a few of the ones too near her stepping back timidly to avoid the worst of it. "You don't get to tell me what I do is right or wrong, it's my artwork and I'll do as I like! This is a finished piece and therefore not open to your suggestions or _help_, and if none of you can behave respectfully about someone else's artwork, you can _go to Hell!_"

Things went on in this general vein for some time, the Count stretching upward to see over the crowd and grinning delightedly that the evening hadn't been for naught after all. The hostess finally untangled herself from the mass on the floor and attempted, somewhat desperately, to placate the Queen, but the woman and a handful of her more devoted followers squeezed through another doorway and into the passage beyond, still a raucous throng of voices shouting admonition and praise in a confused hum.

"Well," said the Count after a moment, "For a while there I was afraid she'd learned how not to make an ass of herself in public."

The Duchess shook her head, and they managed to duck out while no one was looking.

"Why do you suppose those people still throng about her when they know there's a good chance she'll threaten to have them all hanged by the end of an opening?"

"Perhaps they think she knows best just because she's in charge. Loyalty is an odd thing, isn't it." It had been a decent supper after all; the Count paused beneath the gas lantern outside the club door to cradle his cigarette against the wind, the blue steam streaming out from it in a long thin line that whipped down the street and faded. A man stood rustling a newspaper in the darkness by the steps—he couldn't quite get it straight, and he was making quite a lot of noise; the Count kept squinting into the darkness as though he knew the fellow, but couldn't make him out.

"I wonder if they excuse her by telling themselves she has an artistic temperament," said the Duchess, rolling her muff around her hands and looking up at the windows overhead. "Perhaps they like that in a ruler, gives them something interesting to distract them."

He stood looking at her carefully.

"Is this about the military reports from the south?" he asked quietly, sidling up to her and taking her arm to move out of the man's earshot.

"No," said the Duchess, looking at his lapel instead of his eyes and feeling perceptibly that the whole world was slipping between her fingers. "No, I'm—I'm only… I wonder at how all these people flock to her in spite of the way she treats them."

"Maybe they're all idiots," he offered, looking about the clean white marble buildings with mild distaste.

"I don't think she's so awful all of the time, she isn't her sister by any stretch—perhaps her conniptions are rare, or even justified," said the Duchess. "But it doesn't seem fair that someone in the world can be so full of contradiction, and it only seems to serve her better, to be endeared and beloved stronger than ever, not particularly feared or subverted.

"I try to live my life as well as can be managed," she went on, "But I try—I _try_—to be aware of my shortcomings. Perhaps I excuse myself the most horrible aspects of my character by deluding myself into believing that mere awareness of those flaws is enough to somehow mitigate them, but—"

"But what?"

"I don't know."

They walked the rest of the way back to his house in silence.

The badminton courts were finally opened the next day, and the Duchess took a leisurely walk down to see them. The Count had seen her off by way of the breakfast table, and they were both glad for a few hours alone—she to reflect, and he to get down to the business of tuning the grand piano in the larger downstairs study.

Only a handful of couples were out on the courts; Diamonds had been right in her assessment of the holiday seasons. A brunette with her hair piled atop her head into a lovely cushioned bun stood nearly motionless on the court while her partner, a handsome young dark-haired man wearing spectacles, dashed this way and that, desperately trying to return each of her passes without inconveniencing her, such was his willingness to sacrifice on behalf of her and her lawn dress.

With few spectators about and the games in rigorous stride, the Duchess waxed philosophical. There were times—days, weeks, even, when she found it easy to dislike or loathe the Queen of Diamonds. It happened, naturally, like a pop or a snap, deep inside her. She would see something to remind her and immediately recognize the visceral sense of shock, or dismay, mixed with a curious flavor of sadness.

She hated her, that was true: she felt it often. There was a great hypocrisy within—that person declared herself in love with the whole world, claimed to see beauty in even the most common things, then turned her cheek at the slightest _nay_ and estopped any input her royal highness could not bear to cope with. It irked the Duchess to see it, and yet it carried a glory, a kind of satisfaction to observe such foolish misadventures from a wise enough distance.

The Count had once told her that there was a word for that sort of thing.

"What, epicaricacy?" she had said innocently, and he'd rolled his eyes at her and called her pretentious.

He did that sometimes, to her annoyance, most recently when she'd had occasion to explain, on a purely academic level of interest, the rules behind split infinitives.

'Writers must learn to not split infinitives' had been her rule and its broken example.

"You really must learn to not be so ridiculous," had been the Count's deadpan reply, and she'd always felt just a bit self-conscious about using them afterward.

That was the problem—seeing it and analyzing it was different than seeing it and allowing herself the indulgent luxury of abhorrence without preamble. Having met the disgusting behavior head-on with the Count beside her, her odium of the woman seemed a silly girlhood rivalry, shriveled, irrelevant, and unimportant, though it never felt so small when she was alone to sit and think, when it came easily and flowed long.

The young dark-haired couple finished their set. From the way the young woman kept glancing away from the man toward the benches, it was obvious what was going on—she nearly wanted to smirk and stop them for a chat, but kept it carefully in check; not to mention there was some awkwardness or social stutter hanging over the pair. She watched them, watched the girl's pretty eyes flash all about the place like a nervous bird, acknowledged the polite bow with a grave nod as they passed her.

Sometimes Her Grace could admit to herself that ages and ages ago, she and Diamonds might have been friends—had nearly been friends, in fact. These episodes didn't last long, and she wasn't sure if the unidentifiable emotion she felt—whether regret or relief—was one that lasted, or only surfaced in the back of her mind when she felt her grievance at its strongest. Probably it would not have been a lasting friendship anyway, but it was strange the way this cropped up from time to time. There was no salvaging it now, she firmly felt, no point in extending an olive branch—she had invested too much energy in it, and with her disposition, she'd be forever questioning and calculating whether there had been anything genuine behind a peace accord. Besides, there again was that sense of satisfaction—or was it superiority? _Was_ she the better ruler? Did her citizens even like her?

The Duchess sat, stunned that her own mind would even offer up such a question. She'd never operated under anything other than the assumption that she was at least a bit amazing, especially since she _was_ in charge, and to even consider the idea seemed queer. Worrying about others' opinions was absolutely no more worth her expense than it was to flail about in quicksand, and it wasn't as though she could simply ask right-out—it would seem weak in itself. Now she felt nearly plagued by it, and it seemed an impossible thing, to go back the way she came and pretend she did not feel self-doubting.

She watched the pair meander along the walkway before they disappeared onto the street. Certainly the Queen of Diamonds did not spare her a second thought these days; she probably had better things to do, or possibly she wasn't even aware that a conflict existed, or if she did, she did not care. Perhaps that made it all the easier to keep on in this way with impunity, thought the Duchess.

"Did you tune to your heart's content?"

"Assuredly. Tea?" Gently he shook the pot at her.

"Is that the Lethian blend?"

"Of course—why do you ask?" The Count sat up to look at her.

"Nothing, really, it's just a bit bitter for me."

"It's not so bad once you get used to it."

She took a moment to tie up her umbrella and set her gloves on a table before speaking again.

"How was this year's harvest, by the way?"

"As good a year as any. Shall I pour your some?"

"You do know that stuff is addictive, don't you?"

He shrugged.

"I do wish they wouldn't make it," she said, shuffling through the biscuits on the tea tray and picking one with raspberry jam. "I can't imagine drinking it is good for you after too long."

"You say that as though I'm cooking poppies and running a den out of this house, it's a local custom and a wonderful delicacy—you are far too concerned about something that's been weakened and mixed with pekoe. Have some."

She condescended for a cup.

"Do you know what's weird?"

He looked as if he were about to flippantly suggest some characteristic or trait belonging to her, but instead gazed at her in expectant politeness. The Duchess brushed her hand over the satin couch cushion next to her.

"Well?"

"Realizing that the brain named itself."

Duchess looked over and couldn't quite tell if the Count's stare was one of deep thought or disbelief that she had just uttered that sentence—she baffled him sometimes. It might have been put more elegantly, but his silence had partly made her want to say oddities at him just to see how he would react. But it was true, wasn't it? The brain named itself, which made her think of a dark space and suddenly a starburst of light coalescing into a vague _something_. How had the something appeared? Where had it been before? Sometimes just before she fell asleep she imagined what it would be like if she could see a moving, perfectly timed image symbolizing her own brain's thoughts, and that image would flicker like a bit of firelight, and it would represent her brain seeing itself, seeing her thoughts as they focused on seeing her own brain, registering perhaps surprise or amazement at seeing itself, and seeing itself seeing itself. It only made sense for a perfect split second, and then she'd lose it and it would just be a string of meaningless words.

"And also the fact that we are essentially composed of tiny particles that're all joined up together into something that _knows_ that it's tiny particles joined up together."

He sat silent, and she sensed a joke at her expense.

"I'm perfectly serious!" She turned, but did not glare at him. "Don't you ever wonder about things like that?"

He gave it consideration, and she was actually surprised when he did speak.

"I suppose when I do, it's on a much larger scale," he said, not unkindly. "Whether there are scenarios that spring up around us all the time, and if they keep moving independently forward in the choice we never chose. If I decide to play a concerto instead of a waltz, is there a Me who has gone ahead with the waltz and wonders how things could have been different if he'd played the concerto? Perhaps there's only a set number of those closed situations, or one gigantic universe full of nothing but those other choices, and that's all there is. Times and times and times, versions of ourselves threading out ad infinitum. Are we really ourselves, or are we simply extensions or copies like spokes on a wheel, only connected in some tenuous way to originality?"

Sometimes the Duchess thought she didn't understand the Count at all.


	29. Chapter 29

I'm adaptable, and I like my new role  
I'm getting better and better  
I have a new goal  
I'm changing my ways where money applies

Nouvelle Vague, "This is Not a Love Song"

An ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words; it feels like music, and one cannot tell about music so that another person can get the feeling of it.

Mark Twain, _The Mysterious Stranger_

* * *

It was a brisk walk back to the hotel, and when they got there, the Hatter shut the door, leaned against it with his palms flat behind him, and stood gazing meditatively with a tight jaw into the final veins of fading light for nearly a quarter of an hour. She leaned into the far edge of the couch watching the vestiges of heathery blue and violet drain to the floor until he pushed himself away so suddenly that she started.

At his disjointed entreaty, Alice ventured forth into the misted lamplight holding a hastily-scribbled list and several indigo-colored bank notes in her pocket, thankful that the chemist's across the narrow avenue was empty at the opera hour. Upon her return with a string-wrapped package containing seven bottles of varying sizes and indeterminate contents, the Hatter removed three of them, looked at her, and disappeared into his rooms.

After draping her cloak at the ready by the door, Alice sat before the dressing table and ran a brush through her hair with quietness that secreted a kind of quivering alacrity in her wrist, and found herself rather unsurprised at how strange she looked, not in least for her lost fringe. How circumstances changed a person, even in the blurry mixture of ruddy firelight and yellow from the gas lamp. She parted it to have a proper look; a strip at her roots was a bit lighter than the rest of her hair. Alice's locks had always been a pure zest of golden blonde, with closely bound variations here and there, but this was—not quite white, really, but lemon ice or cream color. And yet it was there, in the middle of her crown, a bold pale streak beginning to appear with the stress of winter. Each pass of the bristles dissipated the heat from the fire where she had warmed her toes; it loosed out, replaced by curious coolness, a phantom damp that does not fade for hours. Intermission at the opera house probably had just begun. Somewhere a clock was phrasing its chimes in a fitting minor key.

Eventually, and emboldened by layers of impatience and uncertainty, she arose with tea cup in hand. His apartments were different, mediterranean blue and burnished gold, bands of moulding that wrapped corners, damask striped sofas with stubbed walnut legs. There was a clinking noise from the open door to the bathroom, and she caught his direct gaze in the mirror's reflection; he put the back of his hand to his mouth, then set the dark bottle on the vanity and swallowed.

Alice dropped the tea cup, the saucer, and the spoon with a muffled _clunk_ onto the carpet, where they produced an amusingly obscene stain that would never be appreciated.

"Which ones?" he said to her, striding into the sitting room and holding in his left hand a pair of wire spectacles, in his right a pince-nez. "These," and he hooked the ends of the spectacles over his ears, giving her a moment to view him properly, "Or this," and switched them to hold the little c-shaped bridge high between his eyes.

Alice's hand was still from where she had dropped the tea, and she had a rather unladylike gape transpiring, but the Hatter required her cooperation and did not comment.

"Uh—" she said.

"I'll do it again," he answered. "These," hooked them over his ears, "Or this," held up to the bridge of his nose. "These or this." And he raised his eyebrows expectantly, his expression otherwise blank.

"Pince-nez."

"Hmm." The Hatter turned away from her to bend down to the looking glass. He clipped the cord to his lapel and squeezed the bridge clip a few times experimentally.

She came up and bestowed on him a thoroughly soul-searching look.

"On second thought, that wouldn't last long," he murmured.

Alice nodded appreciatively after a fashion, somehow subsumed and yet cushioned by her own surprise. What he had done had resulted in not only there now being an uncharacteristic _neatness _to his hair, a seamed part up the back of his head with his curls tamed and reigned back from his forehead, but also an uncanniness, for his hair was a very steady dark brown now.

He was a normal person. Or an astoundingly shrewd approximation of one.

Not having a Hatter with wild white hair took everything out of him, or nearly. One could be halfway expected to think that he'd got himself a job at a bank, and enjoyed such past times as altogether lacking the urge to throw dinner rolls at her head, talking of the weather as a meteorological occurrence rather than an anathema and long-despised enemy, and keeping his composure in check and his voice at an appropriate volume. The density of color so high along him called into focus everything about him that was so nebulous and mysterious before. It was as though she could see faint crazing at his surface that could only hint at some unknown deeper tension; now of all the nows, he had a presence, or an absence of vagary, she could not decide. He blinked, he squinted and frowned, wrinkled his forehead—all of these things he'd done before and had been doing all this time, but it drew the eye; she could not _not_ watch. There was an undeniable absoluteness to it.

She felt herself grow cold beneath her fingernails, felt muffled and cushioned from a shift in the Earth, and lacked a word for it.

He was fiddling with the nose clip on the spectacles, then tilted his chin to look at her sidelong. "Fetch the other bottles, if you would."

She would, but—"What for?"

There was a pause while he just looked at her, but his eyes seemed to pass from her chin to her forehead and back again.

"Well, I don't know about you," he said, "But I don't feel like barricading myself up here."

There was bluntness to his tone that she did not particularly find encouraging or pleasant, but she was at a loss to find the means to retort; instead, she took the wire set of spectacles and began to bend the ear pieces so that it would float just above his nose.

"I would've thought you'd be set on leaving town," Alice ventured to say.

"No," directly replied the Hatter—and she had this thought with some surprise, because was he really the Hatter without a hat and his bespoke look?—and he looked at her again with a sad, calculating expression.

Anxiety bade her declare with firm insistence that he do it out of shot of the mirror; even so, Alice was dauntless, her brow creased, and the Hatter answered it with nice distraction.

"I'm thinking of growing a mustache—tilt to the left, if you don't mind."

Alice cringed at the tingling sensation that was wriggling down her neck, but said—

"Oh?"

—mustering as much casual air as one possibly could in similar circumstances.

"Mm-hmm."

"What sort?"

"Oh, I've never had one before; I'm not sure how it would turn out."

She did not answer.

"Perhaps a pencil mustache; it wouldn't be too taxing an endeavor, and it is the _dernier cri—_no, keep leaning—though I do wonder if it's already outmoded, you know, this, that, the other, and it's out the door again." Alice shut her eyes and tried to imagine what this would look like, but came up short. Her nose was beginning to run rather indelicately.

"Well," he murmured, "Perhaps it would only wind up drawing the attention."

"Oh, I think you could manage it," Alice was heard to say; she was busy weighing the task of resigning herself in best preparation. "You always do." The Hatter paused, one hand still up, and waited until she'd look at him. When she did, it was with a hint of warm esteem that he stepped back and gauged her at last.

"There," he said quietly.

"Hmm?" She was already picking up on a change in her peripheral vision, an uncanny and foreign solidity.

"It's not bad," said the Hatter, bending down to adjust and compare. "Rather well, really. I don't know if I'm allowed to say that. I did the best I could."

"Should I look?"

He shook his head, looking thoughtful, and said,

"Not yet." From this she couldn't help a shudder of brief displacement; that curious awareness of change outside of the endless flow of time.

"Sit by the fire for a bit."

"What about you?"

"Well," he said, and after settling her placed himself onto a chair at her wrist.

There was a pause, and for the first time, a measure of the evening's reality caught up to Alice, just out of reach.

"I didn't bother to ask, but—this isn't permanent, is it?"

"No," said the Hatter with a surprised laugh, "I wouldn't do that to you."

When her hair was dry with heat, Alice went to the mirror, and looking there, the outcome wasn't what she would have chosen, but none of this was. That sense of being separate and apart from it returned, and it was only when the Hatter bent to see her reflection better that she turned and gave him a queer little half-smile as though she had realized something.

"There," he said, and wound a dark curl round his finger, observing it with a mild detachment, "What d'you reckon?"

"You look abnormally normal."

The Hatter's reflection tilted his head in appraisal at them both. "It is a bit weird, isn't it?"

They went out, both for late pudding and an almost-gleeful cautious debut. Alice paused on a street corner with a ramekin of crème brûlée in one mitt and the spoon cupped over her tongue, watching clods and dots of snow shushing in and out of the lamplight. It made a lovely scene and was interrupted only when the Hatter, coming up from the pushcart, edged her back slowly but firmly into the shadow of a large building.

Late pairs were hoofing it in for a soirée, all a blur of satin pumps, silk brocade, and frothy lace; Alice was less annoyed than she was amused to think of what the Hatter would do in broad daylight, and leaned obligingly against the brick to contemplate the last bit of custard in the cup seam.

His grip on her arm gave her pause with the spoon upside down in her mouth; looking up, it made a deep metallic click against her tooth. Egressed a familiar pair of heads, which Alice did not fully identify until they were halfway down the street and the Hatter had already glanced back at her with a secret sign before disappearing to follow them.

She gave him ten minutes, then decided it was a wait best had out in front of the fireplace.

It wasn't until the next morning, when Alice came out into the sitting room and began drinking her tea from the far edge of the cup, that she was hit with the full particulars of the previous night—primarily, that a thick lock of golden-brown hair was luxuriating rather presumptuously across her shoulder and down her arm, and otherwise, that the Hatter was still dressed from the night before, and, apparently having been unable to sleep, was flung upside down upon her sofa with his head in the rug, busied by deep thoughts and the act of knocking his shoes along its wood-trim back.

"Lovely walk?" she asked, flicking the curl away from her so it was well hid on her stern side; slurped her tea to get his attention. He peered up at her from his ostentatious slump.

"Lovely? I suppose one could see it that way," he said whilst attempting to rearrange himself. "Perhaps better said _intriguing_, or _instructive_, or _informative_."

"Oh?" She held the tea cup over her head when his upwardly mobile arm began reaching interestedly and bobbing back and forth. "In what way?"

The Hatter gave a short sigh which was punctuated, for Alice, with the fact that his hair had decided to stage its escape from the confines of combed life. "In a sort of er…" the Hatter paused for the right word, his arm continuing its to and fro hunt. He extricated his other wrist from where it was wedged between two cushions, and Alice went for a new cup on the service. "Philosophical-sociopolitical way."

She waited.

"I think she's having a rummy time of it," he announced apropos of nothing, and Alice scrunched her mouth together, carefully balancing the tea cup on his upturned hand; it went still, gripped the handle, and the smallest finger straightened in delighted surprise. "If she's here for any longer, it's only to see the Count anyway."

"What an odd pair." Alice took a seat on what portion of the couch remained unassailed by limbs.

He thought on this a moment.

"I suppose so, though perhaps they're even chummier than I'd thought."

"Was it worth it?"

"Certainly not, nearly froze my toes and didn't get any pudding." He raised one eyebrow at her darkly but sipped with a contented air. "Though I do reckon it would be worth seeing how long she's in town; might be something to be finagled in _that_." Alice prodded the crown of his head with her bedslippered toe.

"What d'you mean?" Somehow he managed to take another sip before answering her.

"What d'you mean, '_what d'you mean_'? I want to know what they're up to, don't you want to know what they're up to?"

Alice ministered to her tea in thought.

"How do you know she isn't simply on holiday?"

The Hatter did not reply.

"Or… here for a party, or a congress, or… any other number of things."

He folded himself upward to face her and gazed at Alice for several moments, his lower half still on the sofa.

She continued, "It's at least possible."

The Hatter squinted slightly, and there was a slight pause before he spoke.

"I forgot to do your eyebrows; they look obvious like that."

Afterward, he put her hair up; they went out, nicely meeting with doom—although looking back, Alice would be hard-pressed to say whether they'd been recognized or not. It was a rather harrowing forty-five minutes ("You hardly moved the whole time, only had to stand there!") either way ("_You_ were the one who insisted on running about all over the place, _I_ had nothing to do with it,"), and afterward, sitting in the back of a cafe, Alice remarked that perhaps it would be better if they both avoided mutually competitive sports for the future. She felt eerily as though she ought to be alarmed, but not actually so, upon his response.

"You _knew_ she was going to be there?" Alice inquired _sotto voce_, leaning forward over the steam creeping from her cup of drinking chocolate to straighten his spectacles.

"Not necessarily," said her companion, nonchalant as he plucked another bittersweet chocolate wafer from the tray. "I admit to some luck coming into it, certainly, but—" He shrugged, sanguine, and promptly settled the cheque, sliding back through the arms of his overcoat before even she'd been able to finish her cup.

And so Alice was shown about Etlucindes in a peculiar pattern: this boulangerie, that fromagerie, this poissonnerie, that flingueuse: tea accompanying them at each. It was finally in the third of what was to be six art galleries that the Hatter at last considered the possibility that the Count and Duchess could be keeping themselves out of public eye even on an afternoon like this.

"Though, admittedly: _where_?"

"In the offing," speculated Alice into her cup, and just as she was beginning to think of going back to the hotel for a lie down, the Hatter straightened as though he had got a truly hot idea.

"I know where he lives."

Alice said nothing.

"I don't think you understand, I _know_—"

She glanced at him just once, then resumed her mild inspection of the street out the window behind her.

The Hatter attempted a glower, but when Alice at last favored him with another look, the effect was ruined by the delicate bucolic scene painted across his cup, rendered in a brush no thicker than an eyelash.

She tolerated the afternoon without objection—not that it would have done any good, Alice suspected; the Hatter egressed each door with an incongruous admixture of renewed purpose and dreamy, detached buoyancy—until twilight at last, when she put her foot down and insisted that he choose one last venue else he'd be walking back to the hotel, alone.

"I lifted your wallet outside the patisserie," she informed him, and the Hatter nodded appreciatively.

"Opera house," he said, waggling his finger like a divining stick in its opulent direction.

"Don't we need tickets?" she said as they pushed through the door. "We aren't dressed for this." But he was already going up a side staircase well at the back. Alice dodged past a woman with her curls wound into a large figure eight at the back of her head and ascended, reaching a common hallway and walking practically around the circumference of the theater before she saw a familiar pattern on a trouser leg sticking out from a booth curtain.

"What are you _doing_," she hissed, wrestling with the drapery in the darkness.

"There," he whispered back in awed triumph. Alice followed the lead of his arm to a box near the stage far opposite, where indeed, the Duchess and Count had annexed its quarters. Even with the light from the footlamps it was difficult to tell how they looked; presently the Count spoke to his companion, who produced a pair of opera glasses from thin air and handed them off without reply.

The Hatter moved, just once, stilted; Alice pinched her fingers into the elbow of his coatsleeve, yanking him back toward her as he did. The matter settled, they stood in the unlit depths of the booth and waited while the Count and Duchess continued to sit in motionless silence.

But no one came to claim the box, even as the gas lights and host together dimmed. It began, in that universal way, with conductorial materialization, attention, opening notes, etc. such that Alice did not even realize the brushed wool had loosed from her grip until the overture was half inside a gathered rest. She stood quietly waiting in a moment where perhaps nothing would happen unless she willed it to before forcing herself to move in deliberation along the curve, past all the other boxes, around to just where she could see the outer edge of posted guard.

The two men stood, perhaps bored, perhaps listening to the parabola of notes leaking out from a dark cleft between the two heavy drapes, untroubled by fate or mad men gamboling about in the upholstery. Alice folded her hands at the small of her back and made her way to the foyer, where ushers were rolling up a thickly piled carpet as wide as the grand staircase.

She found him standing at the curb, alternately squeezing and grinding his fingers into his palms, mashing them in a stuttering, agitated pattern. He kept doing it even as she hailed a cab, and would only look out the window the whole ride, leaning slightly forward, his back expanding and contracting with every breath.

Alice did not catch a decent look at his face until they reached the door—he was three steps ahead of her the whole way up, and began to pace in short bursts while she delved for the key—at once sickly pale and deeply saturnine.

"Don't you want your wallet back?"

He shut the door firmly.

She left him alone for a full turn of the clock, pretending to read a book her fingers had found, but it lacked a title—even an author—and one page's text cut off entirely, which was very odd indeed, as she did not think that half-finished books were worth much of anything at all. She was about to go and knock at the door when he emerged, looking distinctly enervated, as though he had been sick a few times. The front of his hair stuck up damply; the Hatter looked utterly drained.

"Are you all right?" she said with some concern, and as he sunk into the couch and buried his face into his open bare hands. She joined him with a hand at his shoulder.

"I hate this," she heard him say, muffled.

"Are you ill?" They both sat back as he drew a shuddering breath; his face was as white as his fingertips.

"It makes such a difference," he murmured at last, staring transfixed into the fireplace, "Just one extra violin." To Alice's look, the Hatter replied, "Let me tell you something about myself."


	30. Chapter 30

Genius hath electric power  
which earth can never tame,  
Bright suns may scorch and dark clouds lower,  
Its flash is still the same.

Lydia M. Child

* * *

They both waited through several breaths while he steadied himself, sitting back on the couch with closed eyes. Alice put another log on the fire and considered ringing for tea.

"The thing of it is," continued the Hatter upon rousing himself and pressing a fingertip into the tight line between his eyebrows, "I rather wish we could just drop ourselves _in medias res_ to this whole thing, because it's quite trying to describe it to someone outside my own self. It might not be the thing to simply _say _so directly, though perhaps it is and perhaps I'm just not very good at telling it." But he looked unconvinced by any of this.

Alice searched within and felt herself on the other side of impatience. She said: "Do try, if you like."

"You see, I'm _different_ from other people—" He leaned forward and massaged a point on his forehead while Alice's eyebrows went up; she was genuinely surprised when he said, "Don't tell me you're still surprised by _anything_, really."

"It's just hearing you put it so bluntly, I suppose."

The Hatter dropped his hand from a gesture.

"Well, yes. I _am_ different, _fundamentally_ so. I always have been, you know." But he was still frowning to himself still, and remained bent in half almost to his knees in a funny way.

"Quite a lot of things have happened in my life, and they've all coalesced down into strange connections in and amongst themselves, and other things too. It's always been that way, things associated with other things, measured against still more things, interconnected and inducing one another." He looked up at her. Alice could tell that this wasn't what he had meant to start out talking about. The Hatter deflated slightly upon seeing that she did not take his meaning.

"I'm sorry," she said, "Perhaps if you gave me an example."

"Tonight, for instance. It all comes together so much, all at once, sometimes," and he frowned out the window. "All happens at the same time, as if you were to eat all seven courses one after the other inside a sauna, with double symphonies and orchestras overlapping each other in the background. You can't get your head around it quickly enough."

The Hatter blinked and turned to Alice, a bit vague.

"What are we talking about?" She wasn't sure if he was joking.

"I'm not sure."

"It isn't something I can demonstrate properly." Nevertheless, he was peering at her very closely, and idly drew his chalk white fingers very lightly over her cheek to draw away loose strands of hair, before sinking back in frowned scrutiny. It was one of those queer moments when she fancied she might be able to just detect the force making the universe run at a clip, as though she were more alive than at any other time, and wouldn't be able to recall the sensation later whilst lying awake in bed, unable to sleep.

Alice lost his following remark somewhere in the tired paleness of his eyes.

"Hmm?"

"You taste like _green_," he said again, the last word vaporous, and would not look at her.

"Oh, ah," she said quietly. She could feel her fingertips prickling, a thousand invisible needles pressing in on her. He nodded in perfect earnestness—there was nothing of the wallowing theatrical madness she had known him for up until now, naught but sincere conviction that She Tasted Like Green. There was really only one response for his remark.

"What does green taste like?" She hoped it wasn't mold.

"Citrus," he said softly, nodding. "Bit like orange blossoms. But you were sort of… ah, gamboge, before, and rather dry."

"Oh, I was, was I."

"That's yellow," he said quickly. "Bright, mustardy."

It was almost curious, she thought, how little interest she had in declaring the whole thing impossible, it simply didn't read.

"…saffron."

She waited.

"Perhaps it's difficult to explain," he said, and looked a bit rueful. "I think it's _orange_ because the letters in your name add up to green now," he said, drawing closer and steering the conversation back around, "Which isn't what I expected at first, because those letters aren't very green on their own." "They aren't?"

He studied her quietly.

"Besides A. That's a celadon color, then L is sort of orange sherbet, all light and crisp, I is a very faint silver, almost grey, and C is cold lemony yellow, but then lastly E is a clear blue. When you write the letters out one by one," and he began to doodle in the air between them with his fingers, "They're separate colors." He moved more fluidly now, and said, "But if you loop them all together in script, they turn into this... mossy spring green, I suppose one could call it." He watched the letters he'd scribbled into the air slowly float away like a bit of fog, invisible to Alice, but she followed his gaze.

"And all that tastes like orange to you."

"Well, really, it's not so much _orange_ as it is a... combination of things, you know, _people_ are more complex than just words or days, they have top notes and heart notes, and it… it sort of lingers and changes after a while.

"It's not really sweet, and it's not really floral, but it's... spiced, I suppose. Bergamot oil and roses, enough to make your cheeks hurt. Light and tart, but, um," and here he paused to think, gesturing, until he leaned back and considered a moment. "New? There's something else, but I can't place it."

Here the Hatter fidgeted with a sort of laugh, shifting about irresistibly, leading up to the next sentence in a heady rush of reluctance, "You've grown more complex the more I know you, you and the Hare both—ruddy copper, that one, we _laugh_ _and laugh_ about it—"

Alice was looking down at her thumbs, which were flexing in a stuttering way back and forth, trying to hide the blow that had shot through her, and did not find it as amusing.

"The Hare and I have been acquainted for a long time. His name tasted spicy and distant once, now it's much clearer; I can pick out nutmeg most of the time, fennel if I remember him well enough."

"_Oh_," said Alice, and the Hatter plucked up her meaning.

"Well, yes," he said, "I suppose you don't see letters in color, do you?" She shook her head. "How misfortunate," he replied after a moment, and she had to blink to pick it apart. "Hardly anyone does, and I wonder at anybody knowing at all how to spell if the words don't turn the right hue."

"I memorize the words; they're all black and white on the page."

"That sounds like too much work."

"I suppose it isn't quite as interesting, but certainly less work than trying to keep which colors go with which flavors or letters."

He frowned thoughtfully.

"No, it comes as a matter of course—black and white words and flavorless names, no wonder you're so mixed up. Next you're going to tell me that days of the week don't have personalities or something." Alice smoothed her skirt and folded her hands in her lap. "Oh," and he sounded a bit chastened.

"What does your name taste like?" she asked after a bit.

"Completely, or in pieces?" he asked distractedly, reaching for the carafe of water nearby.

"Hatter, I thought."

"Oh! _Hatter_—that tastes like sherry, but it's subtle, you know, since it's my own. Can't taste your own tongue, of course. _H_ is a dark brown, it muddles everything around it so all the other colors start to get this darker, sort of brass or tarnished gold tone."

"Like a shop sign."

"I suppose so." He set the clear carafe back on the stand with his hand still wrapped around it, magnifying the pale fingers. He looked off into space distantly and Alice watched the glass begin to cloud with condensation for a few moments before a thin curl of steam arose. He jumped and pulled his hand away, resting it awkwardly, watching the fingers flex and release in an alien, unknowable pattern. Alice stared at the mantle clockface for a moment.

"What happens when you see a painted sign? Does it change, or would you even know how it looked originally?"

He tried to call this up to mind and squinted into the ceiling.

"There's a halo around the shift, but it disappears if I'm not concentrating."

"And what would it be like to associate orange with green? Does the fruit taste differently?" She was beginning to feel expansive.

"It tastes like it always does, I suppose."

"But how do you know? How do you know that it's not what other people taste? Do you read about symbolic green in a book and take it for love instead of jealousy?"

"There was a great movement to disabuse me of my mistaken notion," said the Hatter rather bluntly, and then he continued as though to soften the blow of directness: "And it isn't easy to see the classical associations, but they're separate from this." He made as though to wave his hand dismissively. "One can memorize them."

"I think I would enjoy seeing letters in color," she replied, and then looked at his chin instead of his eyes. "I find myself quite envious of you there."

"Perhaps," and he looked as though he did not quite agree. "It's always been there, and I don't always notice it, but when quite a lot of things are happening all at once, everything stacks up and one thing sets it all off, you know, and then there you are."

"Oh," said Alice quietly. "I don't think I'd be able to tell when an orchestra was one player off—I can't imagine… tasting music and being bombarded by one's own senses, or trying to describe it, either, though."

He snorted. "I can't do that; it sounds like the nearest thing to death."

"By your account, though, everything is connected."

The Hatter looked at Alice very carefully for a moment. "Not… not in that way, no."

The momentum had suddenly gone out of their conversation, and if the Hatter had anything else to say to her, it faded with his long stare into the fireplace after that. Alice retired to her bath soon afterward.

Later, though, she found herself standing back in the doorway folding her wrapper closer about her shoulders. He was sitting on the sofa with one ankle balanced on his knee, staring out the window.

"What are you looking at?"

"There's a bird out there on the lamppost," he said without moving. "I think it's watching me."

"Oh. What sort of bird?" She bent up on her toes to see nothing and wondered how he could see past the window and down into the street from his low vantage.

The Hatter opened his mouth and the word almost came out, but his face darkened and he sank even further back, still with a distant gaze.

Alice slid onto the seat nearby and waited to hear if perhaps whatever was outside would call, and she thought she could hear a sound like a mockingbird, but it was hard to tell.

"How are you?"

He roused himself enough to look at her as though he had no idea what she meant.

"Oh. Oh, you mean that." The fire was burning steadily as though he had put another log on, but he had the pronounced air of a man who had not got up in some time. "It's difficult to say."

She did not reply, but instead wound a thick lock of dark hair behind his ear and thought a moment before making another sound, which she did at present, and for his own account, the Hatter was rather surprised—as well he should have been. She sang the only song that came to mind, in a low, meandering voice that dropped into a whisper, pausing after a couple of lines and feeling a bit of embarrassment at the frothy, superficial lyrics, but regardless:

_A sunny disposish will always see you through  
__when up above the skies are black  
_'_stead of feeling blue  
__Mister Trouble always makes our faces long  
__But a smile will have him saying 'so long'—_

The Hatter did not look up at her with quite the pleased admiration and levity he might have, had this been earlier in their acquaintanceship. Rather, he gazed off long across the room. But Alice could see that the general appearance across his forehead was markedly smoother, though his actual expression, one of odd seriousness and softening dark circles beneath his eyes, was not much altered. He seemed to be reflecting on her choice—not of the words, but rather to voluntarily offer up and lend her voice to his reassurance and comfort.

Alice closed her eyes and leaned her temple into the wooden filigree along the back of the sofa. She could see him out of the side of her eye like a shadow made of light, a bright vague shape projected into darkness.

"I want you to kiss me again," she heard herself say, as though he had only done it the week past. Just as the moment slipped and she began to forget what she had said, there was a subtle tremor before he shifted with a slight clench of the springs beneath them. There was a taut springiness to the outside edge of his mouth, and she could feel a soft pair of creases that ran up to where there was sometimes a black gap of air if he were thinking very hard and close to mouthing something to himself. He was always so warm, and it felt just like she had thought it would, all silence and the inside of his lower lip. But it was tight, she kept thinking that word, _tight_, and then he pulled away.

She breathed there in repose, head against the cushioning, and had the fleeting thought that there was something she was supposed to be worried about.

Alice woke feeling as though she'd forgotten something, and lay very still until she could remember what it was. It bloomed into being very suddenly when she heard him humming to himself through the gap beneath the door, and when the feeling faded she loitered, half-sitting with one toe on the rug, lest it detect her movement and find her again to pinch her pulse tart red.

She resolved to dress out of view of the mirror.

Upon entering the sitting room, she found the table before the sofa stacked with various plates and jars around a large metal samovar that was wearing a tea pot like a crown. The Hatter strode in, and it hit her again, but she clenched her teeth when he glanced back over his shoulder to look at her, brightness and levity now.

How strange, she thought. He was totally incognizant of his other self, the mockingbird inside her head.

"What's all this?"

He removed a match from between his teeth.

"You aren't serious, are you?" The Hatter gave her a sidelong wry look, opened a canister, and promptly his face fell. A long, exasperated sigh came out of him. "No," he said. And again: "No." He set the tin down with a clank and drew it out for emphasis, "Noooo."

"This is unacceptable. Also: intolerable," he said, matter-of-fact, and rummaged about in his pockets for a pair of notes. "Take this, and this," he paused to scribble at the sideboard on a luggage label, "And go across the street, if you please."

Alice looked at his outthrust fist. "Why send me out?"

The Hatter pointed round the table. "I brought cake. And biscuits. And toast squares. And crepes. And eggs—wait, those don't go with this, but it's all the same anyway, never mind." He settled his long form back onto the couch. "Oh, and _bring cream_!" that last bit shouted as though she were already halfway down the hall, though Alice had not moved from her first mark upon coming in except to start at this.

Tediously bundled and trussed against a light sleet, she was reasonably content to concentrate upon not being run down by a cabriolet the moment her boot touched the road. She was not, however, pleased, when the man who ran the shop took from her the label, squinted at it, and said, "_What_'s that say, then?" In fact, she was quite disconcerted at the prospect of crossing and then crossing and then crossing the street, when a voice at her ear said,

"Do forgive me, I believe that says _Russian caravan_,"

And Alice turned to find a young girl about her age, size, and station, with equally dark hair, though it was more agreeable to her complexion.

For his part, the shop man meditated upon the veritable wall of unlabeled jars and gave a soft "_Ho!_" before climbing a very tall ladder and summiting toward the highest and furthest point possible from the counter.

"Thanks awfully," said relieved Alice.

"Not at all," was the young lady's cheery reply. "Been in town long?"

Alice found herself taken aback by the conversational tone. "No." Not wanting to strangle it stone dead, though, she said, "The hot springs are lovely, though."

"Oh, we haven't gotten to go yet—the opera was quite exciting."

"Mmm, indeed."

The shop man had brought down several different jars of tea and was blending them, weighing out precisely one ounce, removing a pinch at a time while the scales crept to and fro.

"Mostly I've been doing all the things one does on a holiday tour; this museum and that cafe. I thought it would be nice to have a sense of home, as ironic as that is," and she laughed a bit self-consciously.

Alice was not sure how to reply, and smiled politely. At last the shop man was satisfied that his measurement was universally perfect and trundled off to consult the price book. She was, however, aware that the young woman was gauging her with keen, bright eyes, and biting her lip, wavering about whether to speak again.

"I hope this isn't terribly forward of me," said the young woman as Alice pocketed the square coins and took up her little parcel, "But I've got this invitation to a thrown-open party; it should be a jolly good time, from what I hear. I have to forfeit, we're going to the wineries…" She hesitated. "Perhaps you'd enjoy it instead." The blonde—who was not blonde—took the card the other girl offered. "It's this evening; the address is there."

"Thank you," said Alice, feeling flattered and embarrassed at once, and bid her good day.

"Is it still sleeting?" asked the Hatter's voice from the vicinity of the rug. His ankles were hooked over the back of the sofa again, as though boredom itself was what twisted and contorted him into these oddly fluid rearrangements. She could see, however, that he hadn't begun without her, but was trying to make shadow animals with his hands, currently mangling what might have been a rabbit.

"No, it's finally stopped." He came up, slightly dizzy and utterly disheveled, and groped for something to hang onto.

"Well?" And fell back over against the table, though his face did not betray any indication of his having noticed.

"Tea and cream," she replied, setting them next to his ear and attending to her sodden boots and cloak. The Hatter reached behind his head to seize the brown envelope with the leaves and nearly spilled it everywhere in his haste to open it.

"Better," he said, and came up with a bit stuck to the end of his nose.

What followed was, to Alice's eyes, a strange ritual that made her realize that she had never actually seen the Hatter prepare tea in the strict sense of the word. The tea party table had always been fully laid out, and there was always conversation to be had—quality aside—but no ceremony to the drink itself. Now his strange ministrations seemed divorced remotely from anything recognizable. The Hatter primed the pot well enough from the spigot on the metal urn, but heaped precisely all the leaves into it and put in not nearly enough water.

And then he stopped and simply sat back on the couch, looking about the room as if they were doing nothing at all.

They waited in silence.

Alice motioned to reach for the pot, and the Hatter nearly slapped her hand away.

"DON'T," he said in a loud monotone.

"It'll be bitter by the time you pour," she rejoined sharply, irritated and hungry.

"It'll be fine," he said evenly, and they waited.

At some understood point, he lifted the lid, peeked inside, and began to measure out tiny thimblefuls of the nearly-black liquor into the cups. To this he added hot water from the samovar to dilute the concentrate, and then stirred in a bit of jam, tasted it, added another glob, and finally squeezed a bit of lemon into it, looking immensely contented.

Alice, meanwhile, could only sigh, for she was mystified and concerned that her breakfast would have to be taken downstairs, even after such a lengthly presentation.

"Here," he said cheerily, and handed her a cup before clamping a sugar cube firmly between his front teeth and drinking the concoction around it. She sipped slowly the cup he handed to her. It was certainly not Tea as she understood it—sweet and fruity, but dark and smoky at the same time. A thoroughly complex flavor; she wondered if he ever associated it with anyone. It improved with time and taste, though she couldn't be sure if she'd have it again.

But Alice was glad for the savory crepes, at least, and the whole affair seemed to have put the Hatter in a more encouragingly blithe mood.

This mood stuck with him throughout the day, though it had distilled to inner reflection by the time Alice dressed for dinner.

"You'll want a coat, gauging by the place on this," he said, holding the card at eye level and rolling an empty pipe back and forth over his front teeth with a muted clicking sound.

"Where is it?" The numbers and name of the road told her nothing.

"We'll take a cab," he said with a shrug, and she watched him don his own outdoor togs carefully before making sure to put on a better muffler.

The address went to a set of docks by the river, and it turned out to be a yachting party on a trim shipboard lighted with tiny candles in little globes strung up around the deck. Rather a strange way to spend the evening, particularly as it was so foggy, but there were warmers beneath canopies and plenty of people about—all foreigners to the country on holiday, Alice realized—so there was little space for any cold air to settle between them.

Setting a course along the river, she watched the hazy yellow dots of the gas lanterns in the streets turn so murky that it hurt her eyes to look at them for very long, and out on the flat waters, the mists dissolved into sharp black shapes on both sides.

They drank ice wine, hot mulled claret (which was too spicy for Alice, who hung onto her second cup for warmth until the Hatter graciously tossed it overboard and freshened her drink) and ate some sort of pasty that everyone agreed was quite good but which no one could really see. Someone brought up the idea of dancing on deck, and there was soft laughter, but no band or instruments.

Eventually they found seats at the bow in the dark blue and black air, surrounded by other people, and Alice wondered who they were, but it was very quiet; the sluice sound of the boat moving with the water had was bobbing and nodding along their attention. She could feel his hip all the way to his knee pressed muffled into the layers of her coat and dress, and remembered something that had not pulsed within her all day. She leaned over the edge and pictured herself dropping the memory and the humiliation of a day's worth of private reproof over this involuntary invention of her mind's eye into the invisible riverwater, and wondered vaguely if it would ever find its way back to her.

The Hatter stretched out his arm and made a fist with his thumb stuck out to cover the moon. Alice leaned to peer over his shoulder and saw the thinly waxing crescent light glow around his blackened hand.

"God's thumbnail," she said, and the Hatter dropped his hand suddenly to look at the dim satellite. He shuddered a bit from the cold, or shook his head, when she offered him her drink.

They rounded a bend in the river where white and yellow rings began to appear in the ripples and currents; Alice looked up to see a dock flanked by stringed lanterns and quite a number of wooden stairs leading up. The whole of the party stood against the slowing of the vessel and began to shuffle about with their things, talking in low excited voices.


End file.
